Do you nonetheless accept an ancient prodigy.net or aol.com email accost that you are finally giving upward? Or maybe you've been using a college or university e-mail address for several years and want to move to a permanent e-mail address before y'all graduate? Or mayhap when you lot signed up for Internet service, you lot ended upwardly using an Internet access provider electronic mail accost similar cox.internet or comcast.internet?

Whatever the situation may be, switching to a new e-mail address is non-trivial, especially if you have thousands of emails you want to retain at your new email service provider.

If you lot don't have the time to do it yourself, you can use a service I wrote nearly earlier chosen YippieMove that charges a $xv fee, but will transfer all of your electronic mail from i service provider to another, similar Hotmail to Gmail or Yahoo Postal service to Gmail, etc.

While I think that method is worth information technology for some people, well-nigh people can do it themselves and configure everything the way they want. In this article, I am going to talk nigh moving from whatever electronic mail service provider to Gmail or Outlook, since those are probably the best 2 at this time.

switch email

Here is the general outline of what needs to be done in social club to move yourself from one email service to some other:

  1. Setup new electronic mail with Gmail or Outlook
  2. Import onetime email to new email service
  3. Forwards e-mail from one-time to new provider
  4. Setup rule to automatically respond to sometime email address
  5. Electronic mail all contacts with the new e-mail address
  6. Update all online accounts that used sometime e-mail address

Setup New E-mail Account

When setting upwardly a new e-mail business relationship, y'all demand to make sure that yous cull two things correct: the electronic mail provider and your e-mail address. Don't pick an email provider that might be gone in v years or that might force you off. That ways don't use an email from a higher/university, your Internet Service Provider or your visitor email.

My suggestions are Gmail and Outlook because they have smashing features that other service providers can't match. For example, with a Gmail account, yous likewise have a Google business relationship and therefore tin video chat straight from Gmail. Google also has Google Now, which can scan your Gmail email automatically and requite you information about flights, packages, etc. With Outlook.com, yous can use Skype from directly inside the spider web interface.

The 2nd aspect to carefully consider is the name y'all choose for your email address. These days it's all-time to but use your proper noun, if possible, equally your email address. Don't utilise atrocious names like thegrandman2010@gmail.com or shedevillove99@outlook.com. In one case y'all switch to a new email address, you'll probably want to keep it for a very long time, so choice a good proper noun.

Import Quondam E-mail

The next stride is to import all your quondam emails into Gmail or Outlook. This requires POP3 access, which most email providers back up nowadays, merely if non, you're probably not going to exist able to become all your old electronic mail moved over. You can manually get in and frontwards emails, only probably but the important stuff.

If all of your electronic mail is in the desktop version of Outlook, you can import your entire PST file into Gmail by adding your Gmail account to Outlook using IMAP and and then simply dragging and dropping the local folders to the Gmail folders in Outlook. Check out this detailed guide for step by step instructions.

Now if your email provider supports POP3 admission, it'south really easy to get your email into Gmail. I've already written a detailed guide explaining how to import email into Gmail from unlike providers.

If you're using Outlook.com, the process is also very easy. Log in, click on the gear icon at the top right and and so click on Options. Go ahead and click on Import email accounts.

import email outlook

You can pick either from Google, Yahoo or other e-mail service provider. Basically, all y'all have to do is enter your email address and password to connect to the account. You can besides click on Advanced options to enter the email server information manually if your provider uses non-standard ports, etc.

import email accounts

That's near it for importing old emails into Gmail and Outlook. Note that it can have several days for your old emails to show up if you have thousands of emails that need to exist imported.

Forward Old Email

Note that when setting up email import in Gmail and Outlook.com, new emails arriving at your onetime email address will most probable exist imported automatically, so you don't accept to setup forwarding. In the case of Gmail, it will only import new emails for thirty days, afterward which betoken you take to manually turn on auto-forwarding on the sometime email.

If you lot are leaving Gmail, you can enable forwarding easily by going to Settings and so clicking on the Forwarding and Pop/IMAP tab.

gmail forwarding address

Click the Add a forwarding address button and enter your new email address. If you don't want everything forwarded, click on the creating a filter link beneath the button.

If y'all are leaving Outlook.com, go to Options and then click on Email forwarding to enter the forwarding accost.

outlook email forwarding

Again, you lot only need to practise this on your old e-mail provider if you lot are not seeing new emails being imported into your new electronic mail provider.

Setup Auto Reply

Side by side, y'all want to go ahead and setup an car-reply or vacation answer on your quondam email address that tells everyone this email accost will soon be deactivated.

In Gmail, you can do this by going to Settings then scrolling downwards to the lesser on the General tab. There you will see the Vacation responder section.

gmail vacation responder

Turn it on, cull a Kickoff day, don't check annihilation for Last day so blazon in a discipline and e-mail torso. You can as well check the box at the bottom if you only desire the message sent to your contacts stored in Google.

In Outlook.com, go to Options and click on Sending automated holiday replies under Managing Your Business relationship. Note that the selection will be missing or turned off if you are not using your Outlook.com account on a daily ground.

outlook vacation reply

On the next screen, you tin enter your bulletin simply like in Gmail. I would just go out the machine-respond on until y'all decide to shutdown the business relationship completely.

Update All Online Accounts

This is probably the hardest part of switching to a new email accost. Pretty much everything we exercise online requires an email address every bit a starting point and that means you have to update many accounts manually.

Unfortunately, there is no easy way around this job. You'll have to spend several hours or several days going through each site one past 1 and updating the email address.

If you use a password manager like LastPass or 1Password, you lot can quickly go through each stored site and update the address. If y'all don't have any organisation for keeping track of your accounts, the next best choice is to sift through your email and see which sites are sending emails.

Hopefully, with a bit of planning and organization, yous tin can switch to a new email address and non screw anything up! If you lot take any questions, feel gratis to post a comment. Enjoy!