T101.x -- Gmail to GSuite Account Migration
Signing up and/or using an gmail account to get accustom to gDrive and GApps like gDocs and gSheets is a good strategy. It prevents some confusion related to domain registration, but in the end, if a gSuite account is appropriate or required, it will require a rather confusing migration process to get your data (email, contacts, calendar, gDrive files) over to your gSuite account. Each data type requires a different migration process and the gDrive data transfer is the most confusing as you don't just drag and drop files, as you might expect.
This info below is NOT meant to be a click by click tutorial or reference. It is a high level outline of the process, with notes related to problems I encountered with the first 3 migrations I performed. Someone with IT background or a technology hobbiest will likely find this info to be valuable, and it may be enough to get them through a migration. Someone who does not have this disposition needs to hire someone to assist them with a migration. At least with this outline, if you hire someone, you know what you need to ask about to confirm all items are done.
=== Gsuite account setup ==
The section of this website related to Google Accounts outlines the basics for setting up a GSuite account. You will need to setup that account before being able to migrate data (stating the obvious). This page picks up after you have setup that account.
This page includes the following sections:
This info below is NOT meant to be a click by click tutorial or reference. It is a high level outline of the process, with notes related to problems I encountered with the first 3 migrations I performed. Someone with IT background or a technology hobbiest will likely find this info to be valuable, and it may be enough to get them through a migration. Someone who does not have this disposition needs to hire someone to assist them with a migration. At least with this outline, if you hire someone, you know what you need to ask about to confirm all items are done.
=== Gsuite account setup ==
The section of this website related to Google Accounts outlines the basics for setting up a GSuite account. You will need to setup that account before being able to migrate data (stating the obvious). This page picks up after you have setup that account.
This page includes the following sections:
- Link for Instructions for All Data Types
- Email Migration
- Contact Migration
- Calendar Migration
- GDrive Data Migration
- GDrive Data Migration -- Why so challenging??
- Post Migration Configurations - Drive Sync, Chrome Login, LastPass, Tab Cloud, Phone Synch, Cloud Printers, etc...
1) Link for Instructions for All Data Types
Master Instruction webpage that covers all data types
2) Email Migration
There is a data migration service to go from gmail to a gApps account. It is relatively painless
- https://support.google.com/a/answer/6351475 (from page above)
- https://support.google.com/a/answer/1041297?hl=en (another page
- https://support.google.com/a/topic/6351498 (this gives all options like gmail to gsuite)
Prior to starting the email migration, or during the migration, you should in fact forward emails coming into the old account to the new account and during the migration process, you should use the new account if you want to capture all that dialogue. It may mean starting new email strings. It may mean grabbing email strings from the old account and pasting them into new email strings, etc.
3) Contact Migration
See master link above for links to specific directions
Download CSV and then upload it into new account. Contact groups carry over from one account to another.
Comments: Contacts went well. No major issues or hiccups. When done, all the new contacts are assigned to an import group. Delete that group label once satisfied with the import. This system of assigning a label to import groups helps with testing if you want to do testing. From a testing perspective, you can easily identify newly imported contacts and delete them.
Download CSV and then upload it into new account. Contact groups carry over from one account to another.
Comments: Contacts went well. No major issues or hiccups. When done, all the new contacts are assigned to an import group. Delete that group label once satisfied with the import. This system of assigning a label to import groups helps with testing if you want to do testing. From a testing perspective, you can easily identify newly imported contacts and delete them.
4) Calendar Migration
See master link above for links to specific directions
In theory, this should be very easy. As easy as the contacts.
This did not go well. .
I'll update this if I have different experiences moving forward.
In theory, this should be very easy. As easy as the contacts.
- Export into ics file. Import that into new calendar.
This did not go well. .
- Just getting to the export and import links in the calendar UI is a little tough. The Calendar UI has not been touched for years and it is very "engineering" like. At one point you'll have to click on a calendar name to get to more of it's settings and options and each time I did that, my first thought was I'd be taken to the calendar dates, not more settings.
- Downloading file is piece of cake
- When Uploading, you will get to pick which cal to upload to (default or another one. If you don’t want to upload to default cal, create new cal first (we uploaded to secondary first just to see results, then deleted that and uploaded to primary)
- When I uploaded, the process ended with an error msg saying google drive was not avail, try back later. I uploaded 2-3 times with the same message. I never bothered to go see if the dates had in fact been uploaded, which would have indicated it was the error message at the end of the process that was the error. I assumed it failed. 2 hours later I realized there were appts on the calendar. I deleted thinking maybe they weren't all there. I uploaded the calendar again and it ended with same error, but when I checked the calendar, all appts were there.
- To check the new calendar vs the Old -- I shared the old cal with the new user account so I could view both side by side on same calendar.
- Appointment Colors -- The Appointment colors do not transfer over. Obviously colors are not part of default ical format. We had to recolor other than the default.
- Sharing outside of the Domain -- We tried to share the new calender with someone outside of the new domain, and I could not see the new calendar. Go into admin.google.com for the new gSuite account, go to the Calendar Sharing section, and one of the first options is related to not sharing outside of the domain. change that. The message says the change may take 24 hours to implement. In my case, it did not happen instantly. It was several hours before it allowed me to view the shared calendar outside the domain.
- Iphone Issues -- In 2015 or so I setup my gSuite account (Gapps account then) on my iphone by clicking "Google" for account type. It setup fine. It enabled the syncing of email, contacts, calendar and notes. When we did it in November 2016 for someone else, it enabled the same 4 syncing systems, BUT the Calendar did not work at all. The Account/Calender's would not show up in the IOS Calendar app at all.
There is a strange system where you can type a url into a browser to check on IOS share settings...
-- https://support.google.com/a/users/answer/139206?hl=en
It says to type this url into a browser (in theory it's supposed to be the mobile browser but do it on regular machine first)...
-- https://www.google.com/calendar/hosted/{domainX.com}/syncselect (be sure to include the . and the extension
A page came up showing the proper gSuite address/calendar, and a checkbox was checked indicateing it was being synched, but the entire line was a lighter color grey... so I couldn't toggle on and off to try to reset. Oddly enough, it also said the Contacts were a calendar to be synched, so some bad programming all around here.
I thought it might be a permissions issue in admin.google.com, but I couldn't find anything to indicate as much i the console or in the forums.
As a work around, I downloaded the GMail Calendar app for IOS, we logged into it with the new GSuite account and that worked fine but I don't like it when things don't work so I went back to futzing to get the IOS app to work with the GSuite Calendars. After futzing some more, I found instructions that indicated gSuite accounts should be setup as "Exchange" Accounts (it use to be that way... then it wasn't, or so I thought... and now it was again).
-- https://support.google.com/a/users/answer/138740?hl=en
I got to this link above from this forum link... https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/calendar/4ZhNjeVFIB0
I deleted the gSuite account from the phone that I had setup as a "Google" account, and reinstalled with the "Exchange" process,. Interestingly, the Notes synch option disappeared and the 'reminders' option appeared, BUT the Calendar started synching with the IOS calendar without issues. So, you either get your notes working and synching with the notes label in gmail interface OR you get your calendar working... but not both.
I'll update this if I have different experiences moving forward.
4) GDrive Data Migration
As indicated this is the most complex of all. The concept of dragging and dropping all files from one drive to another doesn't exist (and for various reasons, some of which may be valid/legit.... just confusing to an average computer user who has been copying files by dragging and dropping forever). One major issue is related to GApps files themselves... because remember they are in fact database records, not files in the true sense, so that is one of the big deals.
Your options for this are:
Other Issues/Notes:
Your options for this are:
- Download files/folders to a computer (pc/mac) and then upload. BUT...way more complicated than that, because when you download, GDocs and GSheets files are converted to .docs and .xlsx files (because remember, GDocs and GSheets files are actually database records)... Then, no upload, you can only upload files or one folder at a time... AND if you want, you can convert docx and xlsx files to gDocs and Gsheets formats, BUT remember, it will convert all files... so if you started with some legit word adn excel files you don't wont to convert, this will convert those...AND in the conversion process, it leaves the docx and xlsx file extensions on the new gSheets adn gDocs files, meaning you will need to use file rename to clean that up... (and if you don't convert all xlsx and docx files on upload, you will convert none and you will need to convert those you want to convert to gdocs one at at time as you use them... )
On strategy would be to move all docx and xlsx files you don't want to convert to a directory for uploading and toggle off the autoconvert for that, but that is not realistic if your stuff is all mixed together. Another option, if you only have a few you want to remain in true docx/xlsc format is to let the auto-convert affect all and then go back and handle those individually. - Download files/folders to a Chromebook (pc/mac) and then upload. Problems in general. The file management in chromebook was unstable (as of November 2016)
- Download Files/folders to PC and then drag them into the new drive (vs uploading). This actually seemed to work better than uploading. If I recall, uploading had an issue with nested folders... and this did not. The autoconvert of xlsx/docx works via this method too. This became my preferred method for transfer. You will need to use file rename to clean up names
- Share old drive with new drive. Make copies and drag those to your new drive. The copies will have names like "Copy of xxx" and you will need to use file rename to clean that up. but more complicated due to naming issues)
- Share old drive with new drive. Drag current files to new drive. This avoids the renaming issue.. BUT, the problem is the file ownership does not change to the new account... You have to make a copy of the file to change the ownership... and then rename it, and then delete the original. Good for a few files, but not for large volume.
- Use the GDrive REST API to export and import documents. This is an API which can be used to “create” a program to export and import.. in otherwords, you need to e a high level IT programmer to use this tool to create a tool that helps you with this... so for most this is out... and in fact, all this will do is manually download teh files and then upload them... so you would still then be dealing with renaming issues (unless they were covered in the program) AND you would be dealing with the all or non system for autoconverting on upload.
Other Issues/Notes:
- Large PDF's seem to download from drive okay, but they seem to burp a lot on upload. I had to go back and manually upload several one at a time. This is seemingly a known issue.
- Large PDFs seem to cause issues with copy and paste and extracting from zips in windows. I had a 28m pdf and it screwed everything up. I looked it up and not an uncommon issue.
- Remember that a zip file is a “file” not a folder. HUGE confusion since zip file icons are often folderish looking n nature... Thus when you download the “zip”, you can’t find it to upload as a folder because it’s not really a folder even though windows shows it as a folder icon… very confusing
- Windows 7 doesn’t have a built in unzip… or mine is corrupt… but if you click into the zip file, you can get to the contents. Copy those and past outside (parallel to the zip file) and good to go.
- If necessary, bundle individual files into a folder, upload that folder, then reposition the individual files after upload
- You will need a RENAME tool no matter how you do this. You wil either be removing “Copy of “ OR you will be removing the .docx/.xlsx from the end of the file names if you auto converted to GApps file types on upload.
- There is a Batch Rename extension for GDrive. It works quite well, 'except' you can only do files in one folder at a time!?!? It will not drill down into child folders, so it can be tedious if someone has lots of subfolders in a folder with files that need renaming. The hardest part about using this is finding the extension once it is installed. I still can't tell you exactly how to find it consistently.... If you click on a link in the chrome store where teh extension is (after you've installed it), that will get yiou there. If you find the little matrix icon that gets you to your chrome extensions, that should get you to it too, but it may be on a 2nd or third page of extensions (and those are like iphone screens... often to the right or left, or you have to hit the "more extension" link at the bottom of the first screen... all in all, confusing.
- You can do batch rename on your computer (PC and maybe mac) if you have that type of specialty software installed, BUT you can only do that after resetting up GDrive Synch and synching the new drive to your computer...
5) GDrive Data Migration -- Why so challenging??
GDrive combined with its productivity apps is revolutionary. Ironically, this revolutionary system may seem totally archaic if you look at their copy file/copy folder functionality without some understanding for the seemingly odd and frustrating limitations and default behavior.
Gdrive does not allow you to copy folders. I can only assume the following may be part of that reasoning...
Backups of massive amounts of their app files aren’t “really” needed (from their perspective). This prevents pack rack mentality
More importantly, someone can’t just go bonkers copying data in a manner that would skyrocket their storage needs (I guess this makes sense).
GDrive allows you to make copies of files
To make a copy of a file on Microsoft product, you would highlith file(s), select “copy” and then right click in teh directory and select paste. File copies would be created, and filename1.doc becomes filename1_copy.doc. GDrive copy functionality is actually quite different.
For months I was perplexed by this choice of renaming nomenclature and then it finally made sense when I was doing a data migration. GDrive data migration either involved download to a zip and a subsequent upload, or the manual copying of groups of files in a given directory, followed by a drag and drop to a new directory. With this naming nomeclature it is easy to grab all copied files in a directory (since they all would take the format of “Copy Of xxxx” and be grouped together). Thus this behavior is likely by design for that reason alone.
As mentioned above, occasionally, when a copy is made, the copy doesn’t show up in the same directory as the original file. GDrive’s actual process is to make the copy of the file in the “root directory” of your drive and then it moves it back to the directory from which it originated. Sometimes during the copy process, the copy gets made, but the transfer from the root directory to originating folder fails. This happens maybe 1 out of 10 times or less, and it seems to be getting less frequent. If you make a copy and it doesn’t show up as expected, look for it in your root folder.
Gdrive does not allow you to copy folders. I can only assume the following may be part of that reasoning...
Backups of massive amounts of their app files aren’t “really” needed (from their perspective). This prevents pack rack mentality
More importantly, someone can’t just go bonkers copying data in a manner that would skyrocket their storage needs (I guess this makes sense).
GDrive allows you to make copies of files
To make a copy of a file on Microsoft product, you would highlith file(s), select “copy” and then right click in teh directory and select paste. File copies would be created, and filename1.doc becomes filename1_copy.doc. GDrive copy functionality is actually quite different.
- When a copy is made on gDrive, it acts more like a “duplicate” function as there is no two step copy/paste behavior. As soon as you hit copy, filename1.doc is copied, and “Copy of filename1.doc” shows up in the same directory (it’s supposed to anyway. See comments below about occasional hiccup).
- Generally speaking this renaming behavior is very annoying because the copy then locates itself under “C” in the directory, when often times the copy was going to be named the same as the prior with a small change. So one often times must find the number copy under C, then rename it, and then it will bounce back down to the intended location, whatever that might be.
For months I was perplexed by this choice of renaming nomenclature and then it finally made sense when I was doing a data migration. GDrive data migration either involved download to a zip and a subsequent upload, or the manual copying of groups of files in a given directory, followed by a drag and drop to a new directory. With this naming nomeclature it is easy to grab all copied files in a directory (since they all would take the format of “Copy Of xxxx” and be grouped together). Thus this behavior is likely by design for that reason alone.
As mentioned above, occasionally, when a copy is made, the copy doesn’t show up in the same directory as the original file. GDrive’s actual process is to make the copy of the file in the “root directory” of your drive and then it moves it back to the directory from which it originated. Sometimes during the copy process, the copy gets made, but the transfer from the root directory to originating folder fails. This happens maybe 1 out of 10 times or less, and it seems to be getting less frequent. If you make a copy and it doesn’t show up as expected, look for it in your root folder.
6) Post Migration Configurations - Drive Sync, Chrome Login, LastPass, Tab Cloud, Phone Synch, Cloud Printers, etc...
Once the migration is over you then still have much work to do to stop confusion and chaos...
- Google Drive Synch on PC and Mac -- You will need to disconnect the drive account, delete the contents of the drive folder, then reconnect to the new account. You could copy the contents into another folder as a backup (but it will only truly backup non-Google apps files as those files on your pc/mac are just 1kb files with links in them to the virtual doc). If you do this, be sure to archive it somewhere and then it would likely be best to wipe it out once you know the new docs are online. If Drive folder is not emptied, it will try to synch up missing files and folders.. .”technically” the old drive and the new are identical if no work is done on cloud data right away...but not sure how authorization and stuff works when switching...so I’d recommend blasting and starting fresh. It only took 20 minutes to download 2gb. It seemed like it was downloading some and synching others that were technically no longer there (but it seemed it new they were once on teh computer and ti was doing a file compare)...but it all worked well. Remember, this must be done on each machine where Drive Synch was setup...
- Google Chrome New Login -- You MUST create a new login in google chrome for the new acccount. You will need to to all new chrome account setting changes in chrome (like turning off pw memory functionality). Once you do that, yhou will realize you will need to install Lastpass and Tabcloud again.
- Last pass Redo -- Remember, Lastpass username and pw is likely the old gmail address not the new email address associated with the new GSuite account, and I'd suggest leaving it that way until everything is setup. If you change it, you will need to change it on the old chrome profile to get that work again.
- Tab Cloud Redo-- Tabcloud will want to associate/should associate with the new account now. You will need to setup all new tab sets tied to the new drive. when done, it will be impossible to tell you've done anything as it will look just like the old account, but it will be tied to the same files on the new drive.
- Phones and Mobile Devices -- Old Accounts will need to be removed, and new ones will need to be setup. New accounts should likely be setup using the "Exchange" option, and server - m.google.com https://support.google.com/a/users/answer/138740?hl=en Note: In the "calendar section" above I noted the issues I had... It seems when you setup using exchange, the notes shared with gmail no longer are avail, but reminders are.. Reminders are events that carry over to the next day until done. I would NOT suggest you use these in general. Keep a todo list instead. .https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/6285327?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en Here s a video on reminders... and they are new version of "tasks" https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/6285327?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en
- Cloud Print Registrations -- you will need to cancel old ones related to gmail account and redo (or keep old registrations and share with new user...and either way, document this in your IT files... or this could get very confusing years down the road..)
- Gmail Settings -- All Gmail settings have to be redone (including Signature block )