How to Change Your Email Without Screwing Up

When you move into the real world, you usually fill out a change of address form at the post office, and boom! – your mail will appear in your new home. If only you could change your email address just as easily.

Whether you’re leaving an outdated service, moving on to a new job, or looking to get rid of your silly high school username, here’s how to make switching to a new email address simple and streamlined.

Choose an email address that you will actually save

First, make sure your new email address is one that you will actually be using for a long time. This could include finally getting your own domain and linking your email address to your real name. Something like [email protected] has a lot more stamina than [email protected]. Thus, you will not have to deal with an email provider and you will no longer have to worry about changing your email address.

If this process sounds intimidating, don’t worry. It’s pretty 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 any other app). Having an email address through a domain registrar may cost you a little more monthly 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 contacting one of the major free providers like Gmail or Outlook. Basically, you don’t want to use the email address you get at school, the email address your ISP gives you, or your company email address. Work and study letters are fine, but they can’t last forever. You need something that you can always return to.

As for your real email address, make it as easy to remember and as “grown up” as possible. This means that annoying names such as “[email protected]” or “[email protected]” should be avoided.

Instead, stick to some variations of your name whenever possible. You can add something to it if it is already taken by any service you choose, but do not use something potentially embarrassing or something that gives too much personal information about you: your year of birth, political affiliation or your favorite sports team, for example.

Transfer your old mailbox to a 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 you can upgrade to a new account with Gmail. (The process should be very similar to other services.)

Move your email to Gmail

After creating a new Gmail account, you can import email and contacts to that account as follows:

• Sign in to your Gmail account and click the gear icon, then select Settings.
• Click the “Accounts and Imports” tab.
• In the “Check mail from other accounts” section, select the “Add an email account” option.

• Enter your old email address, click Next, then make your selection and click Next again.
• Enter your password.
• Select the options you want (mark incoming messages, always use a secure connection, etc.).

• Click Add Account.

All your old emails will now be transferred to your new account. You will also receive all new emails, so you don’t have to worry about forwarding. This process can be a little slow, so if you need emails to still be sent to your old address quickly, we recommend setting up a forwarding system on your old email account as well (see the next section for how to do this. do. ).

Gmail also has a separate Import Mail and Contacts option that can also pull the aforementioned data from other accounts. Consider trying this as well.

Keep your old email address – set up email forwarding

Then it’s time to set up the system so that anything sent to your old email account is redirected to your new one. You will need to do this in your old email account (if you switched to Gmail, you already set this up in the last step). This is different for every email provider, but here’s how to set up email forwarding from Gmail and Outlook.

Set up email forwarding from your old Gmail account

If you switch from Gmail to another service, you want to redirect those emails to the new account. Here’s how to do it:

1. Open Gmail and click the gear icon.
2. Select “Settings”.
3. Select the Forwarding & POP / IMAP tab.
4. Click Add Forwarding Address.
5. Enter your new email address.
6. You will receive a confirmation email to your new email address – click the confirmation link.

Now, when someone sends you an email to your old Gmail address, you will receive this email to your new email address. If you only want to receive selected forwarded emails, you can set up email forwarding with a specific filter to avoid bringing spam or junk mail into a new email.

Set up email forwarding from your old Outlook account

Email forwarding is easy to set up in Outlook:

1. Click the gear icon and select View All Outlook Settings.
2. Select Mail> Forwarding .
3. Select the Start Forwarding checkbox and enter a new email address.
4. 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 need to update your information across all of your online accounts. This means that you have to sign in and change your email address everywhere on the Internet – from Facebook to your bank. It’s hard to remember wherever there are accounts.

The process is much easier if you use a password manager , which should provide you with a long list of all the sites you have accounts for. Take a moment to log into each one and update your email address. And don’t forget to update your information in your preferred password manager while you’re at it so it doesn’t use your old email address to log in.

If you don’t use a password manager, finding all your accounts is a little more difficult. The easiest way to do this is to search your old email for phrases such as “confirm your email address,” “unsubscribe,” “your new account,” or “welcome.” This should provide you with a reliable list of websites that you have accounts for, email newsletters that you subscribe to, and pretty much 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 connect with and your relationship with them, you can send several different emails to announce your big changes: one for your family, one for friends, and one for business partners. 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. You can say whatever you want in this post, but keep it short and to the point: “Hi everyone, this is my new email address, please update your address books and contact me from now on. Thank you!”

Finally, it’s time to add an autoresponder to your old email address and let it die gracefully. Just log into your old account and create one (also known as an autoresponder in some services) with a message that informs recipients of your new email address.

In some cases, you may need to monitor your address change email to make sure your original note didn’t end up in someone else’s spam or junk mail folder, but you should now be on the right track to opt out. old letter. address and jump to what you really want to keep for a long time.

This article was originally published in December 2013 and was updated by Emily Long in October 2019 and June 16, 2020. Our updates include the following: added screenshots and a new lead image.

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