Email Migration — Outlook to Gmail

Overview

Lucy (Doodla Farms) experienced a critical email failure when her Outlook inbox filled to capacity, silently blocking all incoming messages — including WooCommerce order notifications. She did not realize orders had come in over the weekend until the following day, causing fulfillment delays. The resolution is to migrate her from Outlook to Gmail, which uses cloud-based storage and does not impose the local file size limits that cause Outlook to fail.

This work is related to the broader ^[1] account and is being coordinated alongside the ^[2].

Problem

Lucy's email client is Microsoft Outlook, which stores messages locally in a PST file
The PST file grew until Outlook hit its storage limit and stopped receiving (and sending) email
Her inbox is the destination for all WooCommerce order notifications from the Doodla Farms store
When the inbox stopped receiving, a weekend's worth of orders went undelivered to her, causing a fulfillment backlog

Root Cause: How Outlook PST Files Work

Outlook stores all email in a local PST file that grows indefinitely. Users are expected to manually delete or archive old messages to keep the file size manageable — a process that is non-obvious and error-prone. Microsoft has not resolved this architectural limitation. The result is that Outlook installations eventually become clogged and stop functioning without warning.

Solution: Migrate to Gmail

Gmail stores all email in the cloud with no practical local storage limit. Google's design philosophy is to never require users to delete email — their systems automatically archive old messages while keeping them instantly searchable. This eliminates the class of failure Lucy experienced.

Benefits for Doodla Farms:
- No inbox-full failures blocking order emails
- No manual archiving or deletion required
- Email accessible from any device without local file dependency

Migration Plan

Step	Owner	Notes
Schedule 2-hour on-site visit	Karly	Target Dec 4 or Dec 5
Confirm date with Lucy	Karly	Call Lucy to coordinate
Conduct migration on-site	Mark	Mark will go to Doodla Farms location in person

Mark indicated he needs to be on-site to set up Gmail properly. The week of Thanksgiving was ruled out; December 4 or 5 is the target window.

Action Items

[ ] Karly — Call Lucy to schedule the on-site migration for Dec 4 or Dec 5
[ ] Karly — Confirm the date on Mark's calendar
[ ] Mark — Go on-site and complete the Outlook → Gmail migration on the scheduled date

^[3]
^[4]
^[5]