How To Transfer Data Between Google Workspace Accounts

In this guide, we will discuss techniques such as Google Workspace data migration service, Google Takeout solution, and a third-party tool to efficiently transfer data between Google workspace accounts without any issues.

The transferring of data between Google Workspace becomes essential because of several reasons. Whether you have an Educational or Business Google Workspace plan, the need to transfer your data may arise at any point of time.

Following are the reasons for transferring data from one Google Workspace account to another:

1. When an employee leaves an organization, then the data needs to be transferred between the Google Workspace account and then deactivate the previous account to save a license cost.

2. When the organization changes the Google Workspace domain name, then it becomes essential to transfer Google apps to another account.

3. When the two organizations are collaborating then there arises the need for data transfer.

4. When there is a need to share the data with the other Google Workspaceuser. Here, it brings the need for migration.

Methods to Transfer Data Between Google Workspace Accounts

Here, we will be discussing the three methods of transferring Google Workspace account data for one account to another. All the methods are different from one another, read all the method and choose the one according to your requirement.

Technique 1: Using Google Data Migration Service

The Google Data Migration Service is the in- house migration tool provided by Google for transferring data to Google Workspace account. This tool is free of cost and can be accessed from admin console. Here, we will be using this service to transfer data between Google Workspace accounts.

The Data Migration Service supports Google Workspace Enterprise, Business, Basic and Education accounts. However, it has certain limitations which you should take into consideration before using it.

The following are the limitations for Data Migration Service:

1. There are different procedures for transferring the data of Gmail, Contacts, and Calendars migration.
2. It does not migrate Google Drive data. However, the download has to be done manually which is a daunting task.
3. It allows the pop-up of certain apps which might be risky.
4. There is a need to enable IMAP for the users.
5. The migration would be tedious if is required often and with huge amount of data.
6. The loss of internet connectivity would hamper the migration process. As a result, the migration would have to be started again.
7. No incremental feature is in-built to transfer the new data.

Working steps of the Data Migration Service

Following are the short working steps of data migration service:

1. Open the destination Google Workspace Admin Console and click on “Data Migration” tab.

2. Now, use SET UP DATA MIGRATION link to proceed with the migration.

3. Select the source as “Google Workspace”. All the available fields will vanish, click on Next button move further.

4. Now, set the Date filter and select option to include or exclude certain folders

5. Click on Select User option to perform the mapping using. Use Add User option or Bulk upload CSV for mapping.

6. Finally, hit Start button to begin data transfer between Google Workspace accounts.

2. Using Google Takeout & Thunderbird For Data Transfer

Google Takeout is the in-build tool provided by Google for data export. It is an export tool that is available free of cost and can be used for exporting Gmail, Contacts, Calendar, Google Drive, and many more.

However, the following are the limitations of the Google Takeout:

1. The data migration is manual. It means that the migration activity would be done for the user individually.

For example: In case there are 100 employees in an organization then, the archiving of data would be done for a user individually. Thus, it would take several hour or days to complete the migration process for all.

2. The emails would be saved in the MBOX format locally.

In order to save these MBOX files in Google Workspace account, you need to first import these files in Thunderbird. Once the export is done then configure Google Workspace account in Thunderbird and by export/import option, you can fetch MBOX files in Google Workspace.

Alternate Solution For Data Transfer Between Google Workspace Accounts

An automated solution such as Cloud Migration tool is a powerful, simple, and effective tool that allows a smooth data transfer between Google Workspace accounts. Unlike Domain Migration Service(DMS), it allows the migration of the entire G Suite account to another. It covers the limitations of DMS by providing fast and reliable results.

The following are the advantages of the automated tool:

1. It allows simultaneous migration of all the folders of Google Workspace account.

2. It can automatically locate the user id mapping options for source and destination.

3. It provides the date and category filter for selective data transfer.

4. It can manage the error caused during the internet connection loss.

5. Incremental migration allows re-migration between the Google Workspace accounts.

6. A detailed migration report is generated at the end.

Final Words

In the above blog, you have learned about the different methods to transfer data between Google Workspace accounts. As per the analysis, it has been observed that the features like Google Data Migration Service and Google Takeout do not provide successful migration. However, the professional tool ‘SysTools Migrator’ covers the loopholes of the manual method and gives the best results.