Tech News

How to Change your Email Address

By John Seymour

At some point you may feel the need or be forced to change your email address. One common reason might be that you have been using one that is tied to your Internet service such as Telus.net, Shaw. ca or Cablelan.net, and are now moving away from that particular service and so are losing your email account.

Whatever the reason, the prospect of changing your email address can be a daunting one because you may have used it for a long time and know that it’s the email id known to many of your friends and family as well as several online accounts, banks, utility companies and so on. Changing your email is a big project but hopefully these tips will help to make the process an easier and less stressful one.

First and foremost would be to choose a new email account. It is wise to choose one that is not linked to your Internet provider and from a reputable email company. Gmail from Google and Outlook.com from Microsoft are the most popular and secure email providers currently available. I would also recommend that you get yourself two accounts. One as your new primary email id and one throwaway account for playing around online. You should always avoid using your primary email account online to reduce the amount of spam you will undoubtedly get.

Next step is to transfer your contact list to your new email account. There are several ways to do this depending on how you are currently accessing your email account. For example, if you use an email program such as Outlook or, you access your email account from your phone, then your contacts will be stored there and accessible from your new email account as well. However, if you only access your email directly on the Web, then you may or may not be able to export your contacts to use in your new email account. In that case, you may need to manually transfer your contacts which could be a massive task depending on how many you have.

Now it’s time to start informing everyone of your new email address. Send a brief email to those in your contact list that you decide should have your new email informing them of the change. Also login to your online accounts and make the change in your account profiles. It’s important to stay organized and keep track of who got the change notification and who didn’t as you go.

Finally, continue to monitor your old email id for a period until you are satisfied that the change is complete. While you are waiting you should also spend some time going through your old emails to determine if you need to keep any and either print them out or email them to your new email ID.

Hopefully this helps should you ever find yourself in this unenviable situation. Merry Christmas everyone and here’s hoping 2022 is a better year. (250) 804-8740 johnseymour@ Lakesidetech.ca www.lakesidetech.ca