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I am moving a website from one hosting provider to another, and this of course means that I need to migrate all the mailboxes as well.

Do I have to manually move all the old emails from one server to another, or will all the email clients "save" a copy of the old emails on each computer?


Pardon, the naivety - I hope this additional info helps:

I'm doing this remotely, so I am not sure which email client(s) people will be using at the office, but I will need to be prepared for both POP and IMAP setups.

Also, the server they currently have is on VPS.net (cPanel), and we are migrating to a MediaTemple Dedicated Virtual (Plesk). Both Linux.

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closed as not constructive by Bryan, Michael Hampton, MDMarra, John Gardeniers, Greg Askew Sep 17 '12 at 22:37


Why the downvoting? –  johnnietheblack Sep 17 '12 at 21:32
What email server? What email client? What protocol are the two using to communicate? It isn't possible to give you an answer from the information you've provided. –  Bryan Sep 17 '12 at 21:35
Cool, that's all I needed to know...will add now –  johnnietheblack Sep 17 '12 at 21:36
Added, please excuse my stupidity...I'm not typically the server admin here. –  johnnietheblack Sep 17 '12 at 21:39
You could have left out the "of course...". Moving a web site does not necessarily mean mailboxes have to be moved. I think you'll find very few of us host the two on the same system. –  John Gardeniers Sep 17 '12 at 21:52

2 Answers 2

Your question depends on the configuration of each of your employees email clients. Hopefully the are set in a standard fashion and not all different. If they are configured to download and store emails locally, then your users already use the local copy. The emails most likely still exist on the server (unless your email client removes them which is common with POP3). If the users use a webmail interface to check email then there is no local copy and you will most certainly need to export. If you can give us a better example of how your employees check their email (web browser or name of the email client used) we can probably help further.

Edit: Also if you are currently using cPanel and want to be prepared for however clients have their email client setup, then just do the export. A quick google for "export email from cpanel" will show you the way.

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If you are usin cpanel I assume you dont have control on the server, its only a web hosting plan.. still, some cpanels have the option for crete a backup, and you can export it to a plesk account.If you dont have it but all the clients are downloading the mails (typically POP3, as far as I saw the most common on desktop clients), you will not need to move the contain of the emails due it is not longer available at the server, it is saved on local files that the programs use (like outlook or firebird)

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