Moving Email in Outlook for Windows

There may be a time that emails will need to be moved between different email accounts. The easiest way to move email from one account to another is to just forward the email message to the new email account. However, if you need to move a bulk amount of messages then you will need to use a more efficient process.

In order to use Microsoft Outlook to move messages you must make certain that everything is configured properly.

First, make certain your Microsoft 365 email address (lastname.#@buckeyemail.osu.edu and lastname.#@osu.edu) is configured in Outlook. This should already be done for any current university faculty and staff. If not please see Setting Up Outlook for details on how to add your Ohio State email account to Outlook.

The second account you would like to work with will also need to be added to the Outlook application. Outlook can support many different types of email accounts. Whether using Gmail, iCloud, or any other third party email service provider. Please see Adding an Email Account to Outlook for details on adding another email account. 

Once both email accounts have been added to Outlook, move to the mailbox that holds the messages that need to move. Select the messages that need to be moved. You can select multiple messages or press Ctrl + A on your keyboard to select all of the messages in the folder. Once the messages are selected, right click on one of the selected messages and choose Move.

The Move menu will provide options on moving content.

• "Other Folder" will move the selected emails to a new folder and then will remove the emails from the Ohio State email account.
• "Copy to folder" will send a copy of the selected emails to a folder of your choosing. This does leave a copy of the email behind.

Once Other Folder or Copy to Folder is selected, a window will pop open allowing the destination folder to be chosen. Select the correct folder and click OK.

Depending on how many messages that are selected to move the process can take some time. It is recommended to not move too many messages at once. The more messages moved at once, the longer it can take to process.