Leaving Gmail for Exchange Online

The firm has decided to move the margolisedelstein.com mail domain from G Suite (Google) to Microsoft Office 365 Exchange Online.  We will make this move quickly and expect the change to happen in the next few months.

Why this is happening

As the firm replaces a wide range of systems, several of our vendors say that their systems integrate better with Microsoft's solution rather than Google's.  It will also mean users will have a single account for both email and MS Office rather than the separate accounts that exist now.

The Process

We plan to use a migration specialist called Skykick.  The migration company will access your email and migrate all of your mail contacts, and calendar information into Exchange Online.   This process will take several weeks.  At some point around Labor Day, we plan to shut down Google, do a final sync, and begin using Office 365.  We will provide more detailed information on the cut-over as we get closer to the end of the process.

How to prepare

Google throttles the amount of data we can download from each mailbox every day.  Therefore, moving the data will take several weeks.  If you have a large amount of data in your mailbox, now would be an ideal time to begin deleting items you no longer need and which will only extend our migration process.

The new system has an email storage limit of 50 Gb, unlike Gmail's unlimited storage.  At present, just about everyone is well below that limit, which is just for email.  It does not count document storage you may be using in Google Drive.  But if you are getting close to that limit, you may want to be diligent about deleting messages that unnecessarily fill your account.

Beyond mail, you may be using your Google Account for other purposes.  You may have documents saved in Google Drive.  We expect to be able to migrate everything in your Google Drive to Box.  This is a good time for house cleaning though.  If you have files you no longer need in Google Drive, please delete them now.

If you have created documents or spreadsheets in Google Drive that are in Google format, we will convert them to Microsoft format.  In other words, a Google Doc will convert to a MS Word Doc, and a Google Sheet will convert to MS Excel.

If you have been using Google Hangouts for instant messaging and chat, those logs will not come over.  If you need to save any of that for some reason, you may want to cut and paste the information into a document.  Going forward, we recommend using Microsoft Teams for chat and IM.

If you have pictures saved in Google Photos in a work account, these also will be left behind.  If you have photos needed for work, please save copies into the appropriate matter directory.  If you have personal photos, you may want to download them to a personal computer before they disappear forever.

If you are using any other Google applications and are worried about losing information, please contact me to discuss further.  We will do everything in our power to protect whatever data you deem important.

We will also need to find new homes for the Research Home Page, and (hopefully) this blog.  We are working on alternative solutions and will announce them as soon as they are ready.

Change Now

Of course, switching to a new mail system means that the familiar Gmail web page will be going away, as will the Gmail app that you use on phones or tablets.  We will replace these with Microsoft Outlook.  If you have already installed Office 365 on your computer, you already have Outlook installed.  To become more familiar with it, we would like you to begin using it now.  You can connect Outlook to your existing Gmail account using the G Suite Sync tool.  If you click on the link, you can download and run the tool on your computer.  This will configure Outlook to access your Google account.

If you begin using Outlook now, you have time to familiarize yourself with the Interface, but can still also use a browser to access the old familiar way while you are learning Outlook.  Once we make the move to Exchange, the Gmail interface will go away and we will point your Outlook software to the new Exchange back end.  If you are familiar with Outlook by then, you will be ahead of the game and not really see any changes in the way you work with your mail.  You will also have the option to access your mail online through outlook.com.

OneDrive for MS Office

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that it was possible to open and save documents from MS Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) directly to Google Drive.  This allows you to access those documents from anywhere simply by being logged in to your Google account.

You can also do the same thing using Microsoft's OneDrive.  If you have not used it before, OneDrive is very similar to Google Drive.  It allows you to save documents in the cloud, accessible from anywhere you have Internet access as long as you log into your Office 365 account.  You can even edit the documents using Microsoft's online version of Office if you don't have the full version of Office installed on the device you are using.  Keep in mind though that the online versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint do not offer all of the advanced features available to you on your downloaded version of MS Office.

When you open or save a document in Word, you should see a OneDrive option.  If you select that, you may be asked to log into your OneDrive Account.  Your account name is your email address.  We sent you an Office 365 password in recent months, though you may have changed it.  If you don't know your password, the Help Desk can reset it for you.

Whether you use Google Drive, OneDrive, or neither is strictly up to you.  Personally, I like Google Drive better since I am already signed into that one always for may email.  If you use MS Word on an iPad, there is no way to connect from there to Google Drive, though you can access OneDrive.

Google also puts no limit on storage space, although OneDrive's 1 TB limit is pretty generous.  Both use encryption to protect your documents when uploading or downloading, and both remain password protected from the view of others unless you share a file or folder with others.

While these online storage options may be convenient if you work outside the office, keep in mind that copies of all client related documents must also be saved to the Matter Directory (M Drive) pursuant to firm policy.

Trashing your Gmail Messages

Gmail offers three ways to rid yourself of email you no longer want to keep around.  You can archive it, mark it as spam, or put it in the trash.  If you archive it, the message will remain in your mailbox forever, just not in the inbox or any of your other folders.  You can find it by looking in "all mail" or by searching for the message.

If you mark an item as spam, it goes into your spam folder.  This has the added benefit of alerting Google that you consider similar messages to be spam.  If you are getting ads that you don 't want to see in your inbox, it is best to mark them as spam rather than simply trash them.  That way, you will not be bothered with as much junk mail in your inbox going forward.

If you have a message that you no longer want or need for any reason, you can delete it by moving it to trash.  When a message goes into your trash, it will eventually be removed from your mailbox entirely.  If you search for an email that is in trash, you must specify that you want Google to search trash.  By default, email searches exclude anything in the spam or trash folders.

The benefit of the spam or trash folders is that you have time to realize that you really need something you had removed.  You can go into your trash folder and move any item back to the inbox. Similarly, you can go into your spam folder and mark an item as "not spam" thus moving it back to the inbox.

In truth, there is no real need to delete any messages anymore.  The firm pays for unlimited storage, meaning you can save as much as you like.  Saving extra email also has no impact on performance in Gmail.

Even so, there are some emails you are certain you never want to see again.  It is fine to put those in the trash.  Some people like to be tidy and regularly empty their trash as soon as they put messages in it.  I strongly recommend against this practice.  Google will automatically delete anything in trash or spam folders after 30 days.  That gives you time to realize you need something, but also ensures that the trash will not pile up in the account forever.  Once you remove an item from trash, it is virtually impossible to restore to your inbox.  It is much better to give yourself that 30 day window to recover anything, before it is gone forever.