Google Workspace to Exchange Online migrations now support Gmail Filter to Outlook rule migration

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Previously, when you migrated content from Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) to Microsoft 365, a user could bring over their Mail, Calendar, and Contact information. While this did help reduce friction for users getting used to the new platform, it did not avoid the burden of re-creating all their email organization rules in Outlook. To address this, we have now added the capability to migrate Gmail filters to Outlook rules as a part of the standard migration offering!

With this feature you can now migrate Mail, Rules, Calendar and Contact data for all users and everyone is opted in by default.

Here are some of the conversions we support:

Gmail filter criteria

Gmail filter Criteria	Criteria Syntax	Outlook Rule Condition
From:	user@domain.com	From people or public group
	!user@domian.com	Except it from people or public group
	-user@domain.com	Except it from people or public group
To:	me	Where my name is in the To box
	user@domain.com	Send to people or public group
	!user@domain.com	Except it send to people or public group
	-user@domain.com	Except it from people or public group
Has the words:	cc:me	Where my name is in the CC box
	word1 or word2	With word1 or word2 in the subject or body
Doesn’t have:	Word1 or word2	Except if the subject or body contains word1 or word2
	cc:me	Except where my email address is in the cc box
Subject:	Word1 or word2	With word1 or word2 in the subject
	!word1 AND !word2	Except if the subject contains word1 or word2
	word1 AND !word2	(With word1 in the subject) AND (Except if the word2 contains B)
	!word2 AND word1	(Except if the subject contains word2) AND (With word1 in the subject)
Size:	Greater than number unit	With a size in a specific range
Has attachment:		Which has an attachment

Gmail filter action

Gmail filter Action	Outlook Rule Action
Skip Inbox (Archive it)	Move it to the Archive folder
Mark as read	Mark it as read
Apply the label	Move a copy to the specific folder
Forward it	Forward it to people or public group
Delete it	Delete it (Move to Deleted Items folder)
Always mark it as important	Mark it as important Importance: High
Never mark it as important	Mark it as important Importance: Medium

Conversions that are not supported

We do not currently support migrations of Categories from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365.

Additionally, if there are certain filters we are unable to process and convert, we mark these as bad items. And bad items from filters to rules migration do not negatively impact the DCS score of a job since that mechanism is more relevant for identifying data loss for the underlying data set (like Mail, Calendar and Contacts).

How to configure the feature

By default, the feature is enabled when you use New-MigrationBatch for Google Workspace migrations. If, however, you wish to disable the rule migration capability, you can do so by specifying the –SkipRules parameter via PowerShell.

In the screenshot below, you can see that there are now checkboxes for migrating Gmail Filters (to Outlook Rules) – which is checked by default. Simply un-checking the checkbox for Rules will skip migrating those items. Currently you need to do this via the Classic Exchange Admin Center; this change will be incorporated into the Modern Exchange Admin Center in the future.