How to Change Your Email Address

Is your email being inundated with inappropriate emails?  Do you have a LOT of junk coming to your email account? You may be tempted to change your email address, but changing your email address is not a process to be taken lightly.  It is complicated and time consuming. 

First, you need to sign up for a new email address. I recommend Google’s email service, Gmail, because it has a built-in system that separates your emails based on type.  It is not a perfect system, but it definitely helps with the clutter.  You may already have an email that you don’t use that much that you can use. For example, if you have an Android phone you already have a Gmail account.

Email Providers

• Google’s Gmail
• Microsoft Outlook
• Apple’s iCloud
• AOL
• Yahoo!

Once you create a new email account, then you need to start updating all your other accounts about your new email account.  Just like when you move houses, you need to tell people and companies that you have moved, you have to do that same thing for email accounts. This is what makes the process complicated.  Most companies use your email address as a unique identifier to identify you.  Now you are changing that. 

When you log into an account, any account, there is Settings section that you can access.  It is normally in the upper right corner and says “Your Account” or your name or something else like that. Go into the settings and find the place that lists your email address. They should then give you the ability to edit or change the email address. Once you change it, log out and log back in to make sure you still know how to get in. Then do this for again for every account that needs to know your email address.  This includes all financial accounts, insurances, utilities, loans, social security, social media, etc. For purchasing things, you can create a new account with your new email or try to update your email of that account, your choice.

Note specific accounts may make changing your email address complicated, but you might be able to create a new account with the new email. This will be a NEW account and all of the stuff on your other account will not appear here.

Tell your family and friends that you have a new email. From your new email address, email those that you want to know about your new email address.  You can export email addresses from your old account into your new account. I find some people prefer not to do this, so they can start with a blank contacts list. If you import the old contacts in, then you probably have to clean it up. You can do it either way, your choice.

Do NOT get rid of the old email address. You will need occasionally when you get stuck, like you don’t remember the password and need to update it, but they have your old email address. I tell people that this is a one to two year process, because there are a lot of accounts we only deal with once a year. The first year, you try to identify and change the email address. The second year, you catch the ones you missed the first time around. Over time, you will use the old one less and the new one more.

As you can see, it isn’t a complicated process, but it is a time consuming and tedious process.