E-MAIL - E-MAIL ADDRESS - 09.12.2019

Change your e-mail address

Choose a good address

The first thing to do is to choose an address that will last for many years. Ideally, this should be an address based on your own domain name, e.g. yourfirstname@yoursurname.co.uk. There are some costs involved: £10 to £20 per year for the domain name (e.g. at GoDaddy - https://uk.godaddy.com ), plus £5 to £10 per month for a subscription with a business mail provider that can handle personal domain names, e.g. G Suitehttps://gsuite.google.com/intl/en_uk or Office 365 Business Premium. Tip. You can also use a domain name for free via Gmail - check out how to do this at https://bit.ly/2qW76wP .

If having your own domain name goes a bit too far for you, then choose a new address offered by a major mail provider such as Gmail or Outlook.com. The chances of these providers disappearing in the short term are very small, and everything runs perfectly in mobile mail apps. For the part preceding the @ it’s best to simply choose your own name: this is very easy to remember and to communicate to others. If this address is no longer available, however, you can add an element to your name to create a unique address - it’s best to choose something that is neutral and business-like. A good choice is, e.g. the first letter of your first name, a bad choice is your year of birth or a nickname.

Migrate

You will of course want to copy your entire e-mail archive and all your contacts to your new mail provider. Tip. This is not always possible, e.g. when changing jobs you may not be allowed to take your e-mail with you. To migrate your mail, check if your new mail provider has an “import” function or that it can retrieve mail directly from external e-mail accounts. In Gmail, you will find an import function for contacts and old e-mails in the Settings. In Outlook.com, you can retrieve your old e-mail via the Synchronisation option in the mail settings, while you can import contacts via the address book.

Forward

If possible, keep your old address active for some time, because messages will probably still be sent to this address. Your former mail provider may offer an option for forwarding all incoming mail to your new address so you don’t need to check your former address all the time.

Spread the word

As soon as you’ve taken care of everything as described above, it is time to inform your contacts of your new address. The easiest method is to send them an e-mail asking them to update their address book. If your old address is still active, you may want to set up an “autoreply” to let people know that you have a new address. Finally, remember to inform your bank, employer and other official organisations and institutions.

Accounts

How about the many accounts you may have with social media, web shops or all kinds of web services where you are registered with your old e-mail address? Unfortunately, we can’t offer an efficient solution here: you will have to log in to each account separately and change your e-mail address in your profile. Tip. It’s best to start with the accounts that you use most frequently. You can change the others the next time you log in there.