Clone a Gmail Account: One Guide to Copy, Merge and Move
Written by Justin Cener, Technical Executive and Staff Writer at Corbett Software. Justin writes hands on guides for Gmail backup and account moves.
Cloning a Gmail account sounds technical. In practice it covers three everyday jobs. You want a full copy of one account inside another. Maybe two accounts merged into one inbox. Or the whole mailbox moved to a new address so you can retire the old one. This guide handles all three, starting with what Gmail gives you for free.
Summary: To clone a Gmail account, sign in to the destination account and use Gmail’s free Import mail and contacts feature. Add forwarding and a send as address to run two accounts as one inbox. The free route drops your labels because it works over POP. To copy every folder and label exactly, use the Corbett Gmail Backup Tool over IMAP.
Which Route Do You Need?
What Cloning a Gmail Account Really Means
A clone is a copy. Nothing more mysterious than that. People clone a Gmail account before retiring an old address, as a safety net against lockouts or to hand a duplicate mailbox to a new work account. The same techniques answer the merge question and the migration question too, because under the hood all three are the same operation. Mail moves from account A to account B. What changes is how much structure survives the trip and whether the two addresses keep working together afterwards. Keep that in mind and picking a method becomes simple.
Can You Merge Two Gmail Accounts Into One?
Not literally, and it is worth saying so plainly. Google has no merge button that fuses two accounts into a single one. Any guide promising that is overstating things. What you can do, and what people really mean when they ask to combine Gmail accounts, is bring both together so you read, receive and send from one inbox. Gmail’s own free settings cover that completely. The next two sections walk through them. The second account keeps existing as its own Google account, it just stops demanding your attention. And if you only need to see both inboxes rather than combine them, Google’s account switcher and the Gmail app’s multi account view already handle that without moving any data.
“Half the people asking how to clone a Gmail account really want one inbox instead of two. The free settings solve that in twenty minutes. The tool earns its place only when someone says the word labels. That is the fork in the road.”
Justin Cener · Technical Executive and Staff Writer, Corbett Software
Free Way to Clone Gmail Data: Import Mail and Contacts
Start here whichever job brought you to this page. It is also the simplest free way to transfer Gmail to another account. Gmail has a built in importer that copies mail and contacts from one Gmail account into another at no cost.
Gmail copies the old mail and contacts across and keeps pulling new messages during that 30 day window. A large mailbox arrives gradually over hours or days rather than in one go, so start it early and let it run. The importer lives in Gmail on the web, so set it up from a computer rather than the Gmail app on Android or iPhone.
One 2026 note. Google is retiring Gmailify and the POP based Check mail from other accounts option in Gmail on the web. New setups stop during the first quarter of 2026 and existing ones keep working until January 2027. Guides built on that feature are now out of date. Import mail and contacts is a different feature and Google confirms it stays available, so the method above keeps working.
Combine Gmail Accounts: Run Both From One Inbox
If your goal is the merge, two more free settings finish the job. Forwarding brings future mail in. Send mail as adds the old address as an alias, so you reply from either address without switching accounts.
With the import from the last section plus these settings, two accounts behave as one. History copied, new mail arriving in one place, replies going out from the right address. That is as close to merged as Gmail allows, and it costs nothing.
Two smaller free tricks round this out. A Gmail filter in the old account can forward only matching mail, picked by sender or keyword, instead of everything. And to move just a handful of existing messages, add both accounts to a desktop client like Thunderbird over IMAP and drag the messages across.
What the Free Routes Leave Behind
Now the honest edges. Gmail’s importer works over POP3, and POP hands over a flat pile of messages. Your labels and folder structure do not survive. Years of careful filing arrive lumped together in the destination inbox. The import is also all or nothing, there is no way to bring only one label or one date range. And the new mail pull switches off after roughly a month. There is a manual detour through Google Takeout, exporting the account as MBOX and then following our guide to import MBOX into Gmail, but that route is slow for big mailboxes and still rebuilds nothing selectively. None of this matters for a tidy inbox. It matters a lot when the whole point of the clone is keeping the account organised the way it was.
What Survives Gmail’s Free Import
✓ Contacts
✓ Attachments
✗ Labels
✗ Folder structure
✗ Read status
⏳ New mail, 30 days only
Two practical notes before you start. First, storage. A clone doubles the data, and free Gmail space caps at 15 GB shared across Mail, Drive and Photos, so check the destination has room. Second, mail is only part of a Google account. Contacts export separately from Google Contacts as a CSV or vCard file. Drive files, Calendar events and Photos never merge either, each one moves through sharing or Google Takeout on its own.
Clone a Gmail Account With the Expert Tool
The Corbett Gmail Backup Tool exists for the gap the free routes leave. It connects to the source account over IMAP, so it reads every folder and label and recreates the same structure in the destination, read and unread status included. Date, sender and folder filters let you clone only what you need. The destination does not have to be Gmail either, the same run can land in Office 365, Yahoo, another IMAP account or plain file formats. It copies rather than deletes, the source account stays untouched and a free demo edition lets you test the clone first.
One setup note applies to any tool connecting to Gmail. IMAP is already active on personal Gmail accounts since Google removed the Enable IMAP option in January 2025. With two step verification on, sign in using a Google app password. The software runs on all editions of Windows. To migrate one Google account to another with the whole mailbox intact, the Gmail Migration Tool handles the same job over IMAP with a migration focus.
Steps to Clone a Gmail Account to Another Account
- Install and start the software, then click Open in the top left corner.
Step 1: The Open button on the start screen.
- Select Email Accounts and then Add Account.
Step 2: Email Accounts with the Add Account option.
- Enter the source Gmail address with its app password and press Add.
Step 3: Source account credentials entered.
- Let the mailbox load and check your folders and mail in the preview panel.
Step 4: The source mailbox in the preview panel.
- Click Export and pick Gmail as the destination.
Step 5: The Export menu with Gmail selected.
- Enter the destination account details and name the resultant folder.
Step 6: Destination credentials and folder name.
- Apply any date or folder filters you need, then click Save to run the clone.
Step 7: Filters applied and the job ready to run.
To clone into Office 365, Yahoo or a file format instead, follow the same steps and pick that destination at step 5. Everything else stays identical.
Gmail Free Import vs the Clone Tool
| Gmail Import (Free) | Corbett Gmail Backup Tool | |
|---|---|---|
| Labels and folders | Flattened into the inbox | Recreated exactly |
| Contacts | Included | Mail focused, contacts exported separately |
| Selective clone | All or nothing | Filter by date, sender or folder |
| Destinations | Gmail only | Gmail, Office 365, Yahoo, IMAP, file formats |
| Cost | Free | Free demo, paid license for full use |
What to Do With the Old Gmail Account After the Clone
The clone finishes and the old account still exists. That is normal and useful. Set a vacation responder on the old address announcing the new one, so regular contacts update their address books. Keep the old account alive for a few months too. Bank logins, password resets and app sign ins may still point at it, because when you copy Gmail account data the mail moves but the sign ins do not. Only delete the old Google account once the import is fully complete and nothing important still routes through it. Deletion also removes the Drive files, Photos and YouTube channel tied to that account, and a deleted Gmail address can never be registered again.
One more note for office users. A work or school account runs on Google Workspace, and different rules apply there. Admins move mail with Google’s own data migration service, and many Workspace setups block app passwords, so an IMAP tool needs admin approval to connect. To turn a work account into a personal one, follow our guide to change a Google account from business to personal.
People Also Ask
Q1: Can I clone a Gmail account for free?
A1: Yes. Sign in to the destination account, open Accounts and Import in Gmail settings and use Import mail and contacts. It copies mail and contacts across at no cost, though your labels arrive flattened into the inbox.
Q2: Can two Gmail accounts be merged into a single account?
A2: No. Google offers no true merge. You consolidate instead, using free import for history, forwarding for new mail and a send as address for replies. Both accounts then run from one inbox.
Q3: Does cloning remove anything from the original Gmail account?
A3: No. Both the free import and the IMAP tool copy your data. The source account keeps everything until you delete or close it yourself.
Q4: Why does the clone tool reject my normal Gmail password?
A4: Google blocks regular passwords in third party apps when two step verification is on. IMAP is already active on personal Gmail accounts, so just generate a Google app password and sign in to the tool with that instead.
Q5: Can I clone a Gmail account to Outlook or Office 365?
A5: Yes. The Corbett Gmail Backup Tool lets you pick Office 365, other webmail services, desktop clients or file formats as the destination. Gmail’s free import cannot do this, it only moves data into another Gmail account.
Final Words
Every clone Gmail account question resolves to one choice. If a flat copy or a single combined inbox is enough, Gmail’s free import, forwarding and send as settings do the whole job without spending anything. If the clone must look exactly like the original with every label intact or must land somewhere other than Gmail, the IMAP based Corbett Gmail Backup Tool is the route built for it. Match the method to what you need surviving on the other side and the rest is just clicking through the steps above.
