From hosted Exchange to Gmail

[tyrannomac]

I work for a private school in Houston, Texas. We are currently using a hosted Exchange email service through Intermedia. We are thinking about changing over to Gmail this summer. Is there someplace that I can be directed to that can give me more info on:
1- How to get the mailboxes moved from Intermedia to Gmail.
2-How to set up Distribution Lists (or Groups as Gmail calls them) in Gmail so that once the accounts are set up locally in Outlook all can see the Groups.

There doesn't seem to be much information on the Gmail site explaining much of anything.

[dualsub2006]

Getting all of your accounts imported at once is fairly easy. You can import them all from a CSV file which I assume you can export from your Exchange host. You can read about the process here:

https://www.google.com/support/a/bin...57&topic=14586

There is also the migration process that the education edition can use. I have never done it, but will be a little later this summer. It is explained for you right here:

IMAP mail migration - Google Apps for Administrators

There is also this PDF file that goes in to much greater detail about the migration tools:

http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en..._migration.pdf

Lastly, there is not currently contact sync (really one of the last steps to replacing Exchange IMHO) to get your shared contacts in to Outlook. You can do this through the web version of hosted Gmail by enabling contact sharing. Read about that here:

https://www.google.com/support/a/bin...18&topic=14590

There are methods to export global contact lists from Exchange. Again, never done it myself, but I do know that it can be done. You could use one of these tools to export your GCL from Exchange and then go through whatever the method is for reloading that in Outlook.

If you are paying for hosted Exchange are you using the free Outlook that is included with that? If so, you will be losing Outlook once you change hosts. The online version might be better for you any way you look at it.

I am working with the powers at the high school where my daughter just graduated from to get them off of hosted Exchange and hosted BlackBerry Enterprise Server and on to Google Apps and BIS. Yes, it is very different, but at a savings of just about $740 a month (not everyone with an Exchange account has a BES account) that is a lot of money for a private school.

They will be staying on Outlook as they were gifted with enough Office 2003 licenses when it was new that they can continue to use that. For them, that will at least give users familiarity.