Most companies that stay on Microsoft 365 aren’t staying because they love it. They’re staying because moving feels risky. Years of email. Thousands of shared files. Every Teams conversation your people rely on. It all has to arrive in one piece, and nobody wants to be the one explaining why sales lost a week of inbox.
That risk just got a lot smaller. Over the past few months, Google has rolled out free, built-in tools that move your email, files, and chat history straight from Microsoft into Google Workspace.
What Google’s data import now moves for you
- Email: Outlook mailboxes from Microsoft Exchange Online.
- Files: OneDrive files and folders, along with who has access to what.
- Chat: Microsoft Teams chats and channels.
These tools run from the Google Workspace admin console, and there’s no extra charge to use them. That means no third-party migration software to license and no consultant scripting a custom solution.
Why this matters for your business
Three things make this very different from the migration headaches of a few years ago.
Your data stays safe
Whoever had access to a OneDrive folder still has access in Google Drive. No rebuilding by hand.
Permissions come along
Everything is copied, not moved. Your Microsoft data stays untouched until you’re sure it all arrived.
It scales
20 people or 2,000, Google has an import method sized for your team.
The part most migration guides skip: Your domain
Moving your data is only half the job. The other half is making sure email sent to your company address actually lands in the new inbox.
That depends on your domain’s settings. When you switch to Google Workspace, your domain has to be verified with Google and its email routing settings (called MX records) have to point to Gmail instead of Microsoft. Our step-by-step guide to setting up Google Workspace records walks you through it. If this step happens too early, too late, or with a typo, email can bounce or disappear for hours. For a business, that’s lost orders and missed client messages.
This is the step to plan most carefully. Time it for a quiet window, like a Friday evening, and have someone who knows your domain setup handle it.
A simple plan for switching
- Take inventory. List what actually needs to move. Old archives may not need the same treatment as active projects.
- Check who owns what. Note key shared folders and who should have access, so you can confirm it all transferred correctly.
- Move in phases. Start with one department, fix any surprises, then roll out to the rest.
- Plan the email cutover. Schedule the domain changes for a low-traffic window, and keep Microsoft active until you’ve confirmed mail is flowing.
- Give your team a heads-up. A short “what’s changing and when” note prevents a flood of “where did my files go?” questions.
Is now the right time?
If migration was the main thing keeping you on Microsoft 365, that barrier is mostly gone. The bigger your email, OneDrive, and Teams footprint, the more these tools change the math, since those are exactly the things that used to take weeks to move.
Ready to make the switch?
Get Google Workspace through 101domain and link your domain, and most of the records are added for you automatically. Your seats and your domain settings stay in one account.