Microsoft announced a few months ago that its Outlook.com email service had 400 million registered accounts. However, it would clearly like to attract more users, especially those who might switch to Outlook.com from Google's Gmail service, which Microsoft has been highly critical of for some time.
Today, Microsoft announced that it will be rolling out a new system that it says will make the switch from Gmail to Outlook faster and easier. You will have to have an Outlook.com account already set up to begin this process but once that's done, users can either click "Start" or go to Options if they want their Gmail messages to be put in a new subfolder.
Microsoft says that users will then have to sign into their Gmail account and grant it access to their Microsoft Account. That will begin the process of copying email from Gmail to Outlook.com. It adds:
Once you start the import process, we'll send you step-by-step instructions on how to set up email auto-forwarding. This enables your Gmail account to forward all your future email to Outlook.com. That's it, you're done! The rest, we'll handle. The import happens in the background, so you can continue using Outlook.com or even log out while it's happening.
Microsoft hopes that this streamlined import service will lower the barrier when it comes to switching email providers.
Source: Microsoft | Image via Microsoft
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