Series · read in order · 7 parts · ~105 min
Leaving the inbox behind.
The fear behind switching email apps is that the mail moves, the address breaks, or a Saturday goes to a migration. Almost none of that is the decision in front of you. The parts run in order. Who actually owns your address, and what happens to your mail when the owner is an internet provider. Why changing the app you read in creates no second mailbox, and so no migration. What Google and Microsoft are asked to allow, and who in your firm can say yes. What a connected app writes back, from the label to the sent reply and the calendar event. How to merge duplicate contacts without losing anything. And what leaving looks like, which is a revocation rather than a move. You're changing where you work, not where your mail lives.
- 01
Can you keep your email address? It depends on who owns it
An address survives a change of email app and can die with an internet provider. What decides which one you have, and what happens to your mail. - 02
Why there is no migration when you switch email apps
A migration exists to make a second mailbox match the first. Change only the app you read in and there is no second mailbox, so none of that work happens. - 03
Connecting Gmail to another app without changing a thing
What Google is actually asked when you connect Gmail to an email client, who is allowed to say yes, and why nothing already in the mailbox is touched. - 04
Connecting Outlook and Microsoft 365 without moving mail
What a Microsoft 365 account is actually asked for when you connect it to another app, who in your firm can approve that, and why nothing changes folders. - 05
What an email app writes back into your mailbox
The label, the filing, the sent reply and the calendar event a connected app puts into Gmail or Outlook, what travels the other way, and what never can. - 06
Cleaning up duplicate contacts without losing anything
Why one person ends up in your address book three times, what a merge actually costs, and the order that makes the cleanup cheap to get wrong. - 07
If you ever want to leave, what stays and what goes
Leaving is a revocation rather than a migration. What stays in your mailbox for good, what goes with the app, and the twenty minutes worth spending first.