Leaving Google Apps
Intro
Several years ago I decided to get a Google Apps (GApps) account. Back then a GApps for domains account was free. I was swayed by various articles of purchasing my own domain and having my own “unique” email address: Why You Should Use Google Apps With a Personal Domain Instead of Your Gmail Account. Yes, it was very much a vanity project. Purchasing the personal domain was reasonably cheap and getting a GApps account was free. GApps was great for personal domains, although it was clearly geared towards businesses signing up to Google’s paid services. Back in 2012 Google pulled the free version of GApps with existing users being grandfathered in, so far so good.
So why the change of heart? A few reasons. The price of the domain I have keeps on increasing. It’s not a very popular top level domain, so only a few providers register that domain, meaning not a lot of price competition. On top of that GApps is often slower on getting features Google rolls out, as these need to be tested before they get rolled out to their business users. However, at the same time the legacy GApps accounts ends up missing out on some features that paid accounts get. And finally, the vanity factor has worn off (yes I can be fickle).
I therefore decided to start using my personal Google account which I had always maintained but stopped using, migrate my online life back to this account and eventually stop paying for my domain and shut down my GApps account. So, no problem, just migrate over all your emails, contacts, calendar information extra to your Google account? Yep, if only life were so straightforward. Google does not have a simple way of migrating from GApps to a regular Google account, so you have to migrate over in a piecemeal manner. Along with various google searches on the top, Howtogeek’s guide How to Migrate your Google Account from one to another proved very useful. Google also have information on their help pages, but this was more of a trawl.
Google does offer something called Takeout, where you are able to download all your google account data, however that is really all you can do with it, there is no ability to automatically transfer it anywhere.
As mentioned the migration is very much a piecemeal approach, so I will break this down into the various services that were migrated over, however one service I did use allowed for a bit more of an integrated migration, Migrator by Backupify. This allows you to migrate to and from GApps accounts, including transferring to a Google account. They offer one transfer for free and you are able to transfer over your gmail, calendar, drive and contacts. Set up is relatively painless, all done through their online console. You are required to link Migrator with both your GApps and Google account. You basically select which service you want to migrate over and then let Migrator do its work. It will then notify you when everything is transferred over. Nothing from the old account gets deleted though.
Gmail
This is probably where I had most of my content, basically a lot of emails. The Howtogeek guide suggests using a method involving Thunderbird and transferring the emails via imap. Basically pulling emails from one gmail account to your computer and then transferring them over to the other gmail account. I tested this on some folders and it worked fine, although it took a bit of time.
In the end though I used Migrator for my emails. It was pretty painless. All messages moved over, along with their corresponding labels. Took about 2-3 hours for all the emails to be migrated over. There were a few things that required manual updating / exporting including filters, other accounts and general settings. The Howtogeek guide helped with exporting over the filters.
At present I am forwarding all my GApps emails to my Google account email. About a month before I delete my GApps account I will set an out of office stating that the GApps email address will stop working. I have gone through and changed my contact email address for the majority of the services I use and will eventually update my contacts of my change of email address. Also whenever a contact emails me to my GApps email, I will reply using my Google account email.
Contacts
I initially used the Migrator service to transfer my contacts over. This was fine, but it also transferred over not just “my contacts” but also “other contacts” and added the “other contacts” to the “my contacts” in my Gmail account. “Other contacts” is basically anyone not in your address book (i.e. “my contacts”) that you have emailed. I find this feature useful, because of gmail’s autocomplete, but as these are often just random email addresses without any other information, I don’t want them sitting in “my contacts”.
I restarted by deleting all contacts in my Gmail account and exported over using the manual export “cvs” option in GApps contacts and then importing the “cvs” file to my Gmail account. The only issue was contact photos were not transferred over.
Calendar
Again, I used Migrator for this. No hiccups, everything transferred over without a hiccup. The Howtogeek suggests a simple manual export and import, which also works fine.
Google Drive
I have quite a few documents stored in Google Drive, and some of the folders are shared. My initial migration method was to install the Google Drive app on my computer, download all my GApps Google Drive documents, then sign out and sign in again using my Gmail account information. All documents did upload to my Gmail account Google Drive, but it was not converted to Google format, meaning no editing of documents in Google Drive.
I ended up deleting everything in my Google Drive folder and tried using Migrator. This worked, with everything being in Google format, so editing on the documents was possible. The date of all the documents was the date that they got transferred over though. Also I had to re-enable some shared documents and folders.
Pictures
While I have several thousand emails with my account, I have about 8GB of data through pictures backed up with to my GApps account. The photo backups started before Google offered unlimited photo storage.
The Migrator service does not work for google photos, so I used the Google Takeout service to download all my photos. Due to the size, it took about 30 minutes for Google to create the zip files for download, and then these were spread over 5 different files. I then used the Google photos desktop uploader to upload the photos to my Google account. The Ghacks article on saving google drive space came in use. I basically opted for the unlimited backup option to save space on my Google account (which had about half the amount of storage space than my GApps account). The photos uploaded overnight, due to the number of photos. Once uploaded for some reason duplicates were created. I could not figure out why this had occurred and the only way to clear it up was to manually delete the duplicated, which was a bit cumbersome.
Miscellaneous services
Keep - Was done by sharing my Keep notes on my GApps account with my Google account, then deleting the share on my Google account.
YouTube - There was no way to save my subscriptions and watch later videos, so I had to manually add no subscriptions and watch later videos to my Google account.
Google+ - There was no way of transferring over this data, but as I am not a big Google+ user, there were no issues in starting afresh.
Google Finance - I was able to save my GApps account portfolio as an “ofx” file and then upload it to my Google account. The only problem was the values did not match up. I ended up having to input the data in manually.
Hangouts - I don’t use this service that much so I was not bothered about transferring any data over.
Google Voice - Even though I am not in the US, I do have a Google Voice number. This was very simple, I just followed the procedures provided by Google. If only Google could have such easy procedures for migrating over their other services.
Android
All of the above took me a few days, and quite a few services are covered. The most time consuming issues revolved around migrating the Google services I use involving Android, which took me a few weeks to sort out.
Back when I got my GApps account it was not possible to have multiple Google accounts on an Android device (it is now possible to have multiple Google accounts on Android). As a result I decided to use my GApps account as my main account for Android.
Google Play Store purchases
Through my GApps account I have downloaded many apps and made numerous app purchases. As these app purchases are tied down to your account, Google have said there is no way of migrating them over to a new account. I had found that quite a few people were in the same position as me and I had even spoken directly to Google Play support about this (both over the phone and via email) and they said the only way round it was to speak to the app developers directly to see if they could refund my old purchase on my GApps account, if I re-purchase the app on my Google account.
I went through all my app purchases and contacted each developer separately. Some apps are no longer maintained and in quite a few cases the developers never responded to me. However, with the main apps I use, quite a few of the developers responded. Out of those that responded, some were willing to give me refunds and some were not. Luckily the ones that did offer me refunds were often for apps I had spent the most amount of money on. I was refunded by the method I paid for the app, which in most cases was through Google Play credit.
Google Play credit balance
There is no way of automatically transferring your Google Play credit from one Google account to another. Luckily as a one off, Google were willing to manually transfer the credit over from my GApps account to my Google account. This did involve a phone call to Google Wallet at +1-855-492-5538. You have to make sure that the addresses on both accounts are the same, but otherwise the process was relatively painless.
Android Apps
The only way I could find in moving over my apps from one account to another was by adding my Google account to my Android and going through all my presently installed apps, and then re-installing them via my Google account. This was a pain and had to be done on each Android device I had. I then deleted my GApps account from my Android devices. If I had left both account on my Android device, Google was trying to sync both accounts, which resulted in battery drain and a lot of duplicate information. I did try turning off autosync on my GApps account, but any information already synced remained.
For any apps that I had previously purchased on my GApps account that I could not get a refund for, even after deleting my GApps account from my Android device, they still work, but I don’t think I will be able to get any updates for them. I have backed up these apps in Titanium Backup in case have to factory reset my phone.
Final thoughts
As shown above, changing over from a GApps account to a Google account is a very involved process, with the added problems involving Google Play / Android. If Google Play / Android were not a factor, the change over would probably have been a bit more straightforward (and quicker).
I am now pretty much migrated over and I will close my GApps account just before my domain expires at the end of the year. According to Google, when you shut down an account, everything gets deleted automatically. However, just to be safe, I will manually delete as much information as possible before shutting down my GApps account.
I guess the above migration summary would also apply for moving over from one Google account to another or also from moving a Google account to a GApps account, so am hoping this will prove as a useful guide to others who might need to go through the process. From my above experience, if you already have a Google account and are thinking of changing it or moving to GApps, keep your existing Google account for your Android stuff and only migrate over the non Android related services.
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