When you move in the real world, you typically fill out a change of address form at the post office and boom, your mail shows up at your new home. If only it were that easy to change your email address.
Whether you’re leaving an outdated service, moving to a new job, or want to ditch the silly username you created in high school, here’s how to make the transition to a new email address simple and easy. neat.
choose an email that you will actually keep
First, make sure your new email address is one you’ll actually be using for a long time. That might mean finally getting your own domain and associating your email address with your real name. something like firstname@lastname.com has much more staying power than yourname@yahoo.com. this way, you won’t have to deal with an email provider and you won’t have to worry about changing your email address ever again.
If this process scares you, 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 your app of choice). Having an email address through your domain registrar may cost you a little more each month for the privilege, but it’s a small price to pay for personalized email.
If you don’t want to spend money on a domain, we recommend choosing one of the big free providers like 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. emails from work and school are fine, but they may not last forever. you need something you can always come back to.
As for your real email address, make it as easy to remember and as “adult” as possible. that means avoiding embarrassing names like “thorinsparkles2000@gmail.com” or “zeldafan1969@outlook.com”.
Instead, use some variation of your given name whenever possible. you can add something to it if you’re already signed up to the service of your choice, but don’t use anything potentially embarrassing or anything that reveals too many personal details about you: your year of birth, your political affiliation, or your favorite sports team, for example. example.
migrate your old inbox to the new one
In many cases, you can migrate your old emails and contacts to your new email address quite easily. We can’t cover how to do this with every domain and webmail provider out there, but here’s how you would migrate to a new account with gmail. (The process should be quite similar with other services).
migrate your email to gmail
once you set up a new gmail account, you can import email and contacts to that account as follows:
- log in to your gmail account and click the gear icon, then select “settings”.
- open the “accounts and import” tab.
- in the “check mail from other accounts” tab, select the option “add a mail account”.
- enter your old email address, click “next”, then make a selection and press “next” again.
- enter your password.
- select the options you want (label incoming messages, always use a secure connection, etc.).
- click “add account”.
all your old emails will now be included in your new account. You’ll also get all the new emails that come in, so you don’t have to worry about email forwarding. this process can be a bit slow, so if you need to keep emails going 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) . ).
gmail also has a separate “import mail and contacts” option that can pull the aforementioned data from other accounts as well. consider giving this a shot too.
Keep your old email alive: set up email forwarding
Next, it’s time to set up a system so that anything sent to your old email account is forwarded to your new one. you’ll need to do this on 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’ll want to forward those emails to a new account. this is how it’s done:
- open gmail and click the gear icon.
- select settings.
- select the “forwarding and pop/imap” tab.
- click on “add a forwarding address”.
- enter your new email address.
- you will receive a verification email at your new email address ; click the link to confirm.
now when someone sends you an email to your old gmail address, you will receive that email to your new email address. If you want to receive only selected forwarded emails, you can set up filter-specific email forwards so you don’t bring junk or spam to your new email.
set up email forwarding from your old outlook account
email forwarding is easy to set up in outlook:
- click the gear icon and select “view all outlook settings”.
- select mail > forwarding.
- check the “start forwarding” box and enter your new email address.
- select “save”.
now any email sent to your old outlook address will go 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 your information on all of your online accounts. This means you have to log in and change your email address everywhere on the web, from Facebook to your bank. it’s hard to remember all the places you have accounts.
This process is much easier if you use a password manager, which should give you a long list of all the sites where you have accounts. take an afternoon 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 you don’t use your old email address for your logins.
If you don’t use a password manager, it’s a little harder to find all your accounts. The easiest way to do this is to look in your old email for phrases like “confirm your email,” “unsubscribe,” “your new account,” or “welcome to.” this should give you a solid list of websites you have accounts on, email newsletters you’ve signed up for, and pretty much everything else.
tell your friends and family
Finally, it’s time to let your friends and family know 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 a few different emails to announce your big change: one to your family, one to friends, and one to business associates. Send the emails from your new email address and copy everyone else on your list so you don’t accidentally share a bunch of email addresses that people don’t want to share. You can say whatever you want in this note, but keep it short and to the point: “Hello everyone, this is my new email address, please update your address books and contact me here from now on. thank you!”
Finally, it’s time to send an autoresponder to your old email address and let it gracefully disappear. simply go to your old account and create one (also known as an autoresponder on some services) with a message informing recipients of your new email address.
In some cases, you may need to follow up on your change of address email to make sure your initial note didn’t end up in someone’s junk or spam folder, but now you should be well on your way to ditch that old email address and move on to something you’ll actually want to keep for a long time.
This article was originally published in December 2013 and updated in October 2019 and again on June 16, 2020 by emily long. our updates include the following: added screenshots and a new main image. updated 3/3/22 with new details.