How to Switch Email Addresses Without Losing Everything

How to Switch Email Addresses Without Losing Everything

So you want to change email addresses.  Once you have your new email address you need to notify everyone about your change of email address.  Just like you would for snail mail, except you can’t just fill out a card and send it the email postmaster because there is no such entity. You have to do it all manually.

Notifying Everyone Of Your New Email Address

In order to start notifying everyone of your new email address, you need to create a signature letting them know of the change. Go into signatures of your old email and put a little note into the signature section that you are changing your email address. Every email provider has a place for you to create an automatic signature that attaches to the bottom of every email you send.  Usually, you can find the signatures under setting/general. Scroll down until you see “signature”.

Then type in a message such as.  Please be informed, all communications should be sent to “your new email address”  and this account will no longer respond to emails. Or if you want to keep it casual, simply put, “I have a new email address, “your new email address goes here” please send all emails to my new email address.  This way while you are in the process of changing everything over and you do email someone from the old email your signature line will tell them of your new address.

Get A List of All Online Accounts

Next, install unroll.me.  This service will provide you a list of every online account you signed up with using your old email.  Write every website you still want to receive communication from. Once you have the list created you will need to log into each account and change your email address on those accounts and change it to your new email address.

Transferring Old Email to Your New Account

Transfer all old email from your old account to your new account.  Unfortunately, every email provider has different instructions. Here is an article on how to transfer emails from different accounts. Important:  when transferring email to your new account it can take time. DO NOT stop the process, Don’t get impatient. If you do, your emails will not transfer over and everything that you have saved in your old email such as emails, folders, could potentially be lost forever.

Migrate All Contacts and Calendars

You will need to export all contacts, calendars and any other data from your old account and import it into the new account. All email has this export feature, and every email is different.  

Notifying Everyone Using Your New Email Address

You can create a group called everyone and put all your contacts in that group and then send out an email blast letting everyone know about your new Email address.  Note some email services will only allow you to send out 200-800 emails a day, so you might have to break down your list into sections if you have a ton of contacts.

Once you have the “everyone” group created you need to send an email notifying everyone.  Create a new email, and in the to: field send it to yourself. Don’t send it to everyone, that will just confuse everyone..  Instead use the BBC area to send to everyone. This way everyone will get an email only addressed to them and not everyone.

Auto-forwarding

Turn on the auto-forwarding feature, which means if someone emails your old account it sends it to your new account automatically.  Keep this turned on for about 3 to 6 months and when and if you do receive an email from the old email address you will need to reply from your new address and let them know of your email change.  If it’s a company you will need to log in to your account and change your email address in their system.

Never Delete Your Old Email Account

Never delete your old email account, because you never know when you might need it to reset an account that you forgot about later down the line.  You just need to know how to get into the old account just in case you need to reset an account’s password that you set up using the old email address you can.

The Final Step

After 3 or 6 months have gone by turn off the forwarding feature in your old email and create an auto-reply that states this account has been closed.  It’s up to you if you would like to provide your new email address in the automatic reply

I know this is a lot to take in, but if you need to change your email address and don’t want to lose any mail or contacts this is the way it needs to be done.  If you need help with any of these steps call and set up an appointment and we will be glad to help you.

Until Next Time,

Megabite.

Categorised in: Technology Information

This post was written by Karen