How easy is it to migrate all your 'Google Account' based services to the 'Google Apps For Your Domain' trial

Question

Just received the following email:

I have services such as Reader and Picasa using regular Google Accounts.

Is there an easy way to import them in one step? Do I have to export from every service on each account and reimport in to the GAFYD services?

Answer 1

I just went through this transition. Some stuff is really easy to do - others are hard. Google provides info on how to move things across at their Help Centre, with a list of what can be migrated and how:

Data Transfer

You can transfer information from one account to another for the following products. For any other product, transferring product information is currently unavailable. This may change over time, so check back here for updates.

AdWords
Blogger
Bookmarks (Export and import)
Contacts (Export and import)
FeedBurner
iGoogle (To transfer data, create your own backup and restore it to the new account through XML)
Maps: Saved Locations
Reader
YouTube

Sharing Options

You can use sharing options with the following products to share data between accounts you own:

Analytics
App Engine
Calendar
Docs (For Google Documents, Spreadsheets, Presentations, and Forms)
Maps: My Maps
Picasa
Sites

For the 2 you mention...

• Reader - export & import subscriptions works really well, you just lose all your reading statistics etc - this didn't matter to me really.
• Picasa - I changed my logon in the software on my computer and set all my albums to re-sync... laborious, but I'm back up and running. Annoyance: all my photos are now in a different place under a different username. The old one still works though. You'll lose comments & stuff too this way - again, this didn't matter to me as I only had a couple!

Answer 2

You can't export starred items from Reader. The most obvious thing to do is bookmark each in your browser. I figured out a workaround, though.

In the old account (with all the starred items) make each starred item a shared item as well (Share link at the bottom of each item).

Log in to your new Reader account. Add the email address for your old account as a followed user. Suddenly your shared items will be visible in your new account! You can proceed to star them for your new account.

This may take a while, depending on how many items you have. I had about 100 items, so I had to share each one in the old account, then star each one in the new.