Five Things to Remember When Changing Your Email Address
When you move to the real world, you usually fill out a change of address form at the post office, and bam! – your mail will appear in your new home. If only changing your email address was as easy. Whether you’re leaving a legacy service, moving to a new job, or just want to get rid of that stupid username you created in high school, here’s how to make the transition to a new email address simple and streamlined.
Choose an email address you’ll actually keep
First, make sure that your new email address is something you will actually use for a long time. This may involve finally getting your own domain and linking your email address to your real name. Something like [email protected] has much more robustness than [email protected] . This way, you won’t have to deal with your email provider , and you won’t have to worry about changing your email address anymore.
This may seem like a daunting task, but it’s actually quite easy to get your own domain name and set up an email address that you can use in a more familiar interface like Gmail (or your app of choice). Having an email address through a domain registrar may cost you a little more each month for the privilege, but it’s a small price to pay for a custom email address.
If you don’t want to spend money on a domain, we recommend using one of the large free providers, such as Gmail or Outlook. Basically, you want to avoid the email address you get from your school, the email address your ISP gives you, or your company email address. Work and school emails are great, but they don’t last forever. You need something you can always come back to.
As for your actual email address, make it as easy to remember and “grown-up” as possible. This means avoiding annoying names such as “ [email protected] ” or “ [email protected] ”.
Instead, stick to some variation of your name if possible. You can add anything to it if it’s already used in whatever service you choose, but don’t use anything potentially embarrassing or something that reveals too much personal information about you: your year of birth, your political views, or your favorite sports team, for example.
Transfer your old mailbox to the new one
In many cases, you can transfer your old emails and contacts to a new email address quite easily. We can’t tell you how to do this with every webmail and domain provider, but here’s how to switch to a new account from Gmail. (The process should be very similar to other services.)
How to Transfer Your Email to Gmail
After setting up a new Gmail account, you can import email and contacts into that account as follows:
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Sign in to your Gmail account, click the gear icon, then select Settings .
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Open the Accounts and Import tab.
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In the “Check mail from other accounts” section, select Add a mail account .
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Enter your old email address, click Next , make your selection, and click Next again.
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Select the options you want (flag incoming messages, always use a secure connection, etc.).
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Click Add Account .
All your old emails will now be transferred to your new account. You’ll also receive all new emails that come in, so you don’t have to worry about email forwarding. This process can be a little slow, so if you need emails delivered to your old address quickly, we recommend setting up a forwarding system to your old email account as well (see next section for how to do this). ).
Gmail also has a separate “Import Mail and Contacts” option that can also pull the above-mentioned data from other accounts. Consider trying this too.
Save old email: Set up email forwarding.
Then it’s time to set up the system so that everything sent to your old email account is forwarded to the new one. You’ll need to do this with your old email account (if you switched to Gmail, you’ll already have this set up in the last step). It’s different for each email provider, but here’s how to set up email forwarding from Gmail and Outlook.
How to Set Up Email Forwarding from an Old Gmail Account
If you switch from Gmail to another service, you’ll want to forward those emails to the new account. Here’s how to do it:
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Open Gmail and click the gear icon.
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Select Settings.
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Select the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab.
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Click Add Forwarding Address .
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Enter a new email address.
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Click Next > Continue > OK .
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You will receive a confirmation email to your new email address – click the link to confirm.
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Refresh your browser and go back to Forwarding & POP/IMAP > Forwarding > Forward a Copy of Incoming Mail to choose what you want to happen to a copy of your Gmail messages.
Now, when someone sends you an email to your old Gmail address, you will receive that email to your new email address. If you only want to receive selected forwarded emails, you can set up email forwarding using a special filter to avoid bringing junk or spam with you into a new email.
How to Set Up Email Forwarding from an Old Outlook Account
Email forwarding is easy to set up in Outlook:
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At the top of your web browser page, select the Settings gear icon.
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Choose Mail > Forward .
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Select “Enable forwarding” and enter your new email address.
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Select Save .
Now any email sent to your old Outlook address will be sent to your new one.
Update your email address on all your accounts.
One of the biggest problems with a new email address is that you have to update the information in all your online accounts. This means you need to log in and change your email address everywhere on the internet – from Facebook to your bank. It’s hard to remember where you have accounts.
This process will be much easier if you use a password manager, which should give you a long list of all the sites you have accounts on. Take half a day to log into each one and update your email address. And be sure to update your information in your preferred password manager so it doesn’t use your old email address to log in.
If you don’t use a password manager, finding all your accounts will be a little more difficult. The easiest way to do this is to search your old email for phrases like “verify email,” “unsubscribe,” “your new account,” or “welcome.” This should give you a detailed list of websites you have accounts on, email newsletters you subscribe to, and just about everything else.
Tell your friends and family
Finally, it’s time to tell your friends and family that they need to update their address books with your new email address.
Depending on the number of people you need to reach and your relationship with them, you may want to send out several different emails to announce your big change: one for your family, one for your friends, and one for your business associates. Send emails from your new email address and BCC to everyone else on your list so you don’t accidentally share a bunch of email addresses that people might not want to share.
Finally, it’s time to set up an autoresponder on your old email address and let it die gracefully. Just go to your old account and create an account (also called an autoresponder on some services) with a message letting recipients know about your new email address.
In some cases, you may need to follow up on a change of address email to make sure your original note didn’t end up in someone’s spam or junk mail folder, but you should now be on your way to discarding that old email . address and move on to what you really want to keep for a long time.