After subscribing to and setting up a Google Apps custom domain hosted service to use Gmail email service, there must be plenty of email messages and contacts that are storing in the local desktop email client programs such as Microsoft Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird. Moving and migrating these emails and contacts to the Google Apps mailbox can be easily done by using Google Email Uploader.

Google Email Uploader is a desktop utility for Microsoft Windows platform that uploads email and contacts from third party desktop email client programs into Google Apps mailbox. The Email Uploader preserves information such as sent dates and sender/recipient data, as well as the folder structure used by the other email program.

Google Email Uploader allows user to select all or selected subsets of email in local mail file for uploading and importing into Google Apps’ Gmail mailbox. Users can also select by folder to import and transfer to online storage. When importing, the Uploader can archive all uploaded emails (skip Inbox) or apply labels according to folder names.

Google Email Uploader supports Microsoft Outlook 2002+, Microsoft Outlook Express 6.0+ and Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5+ (but not Windows Mail in Windows Vista). It works with Google Apps account only, not the ordinary Gmail account. For normal Gmail or Google Mail (as known in UK and Germany), users can use the trick to upload and import the emails to Gmail.

Download Google Email Uploader. The Uploader is open source, so those interested in source code can browse it at developer’s site.