How to Change Your Email Address the Easy Way

Whether it’s that reason you need the change—or some other issue brought you here—the headaches that come along with changing your email address are many. After all, you have to update everyone (friends, family, banks, subscription services, and beyond!) with your new address.

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So, you might wonder, “Can I change my email address without losing everything?” If you use Outlook, you’re in luck. But if you don’t, all is not lost. Read on to learn how to change your email address in Microsoft Outlook, as well as other popular providers like Gmail and Yahoo.

How to change your email address in Outlook. Microsoft Outlook offers a unique feature where you can change your email address without setting up a new account or implementing email forwarding. Outlook allows you to change your email address, and it’s not overly complicated. You’re going to create an alias that links your new email address to the old one. By doing this, all your contacts and settings will stay the same without migrating anything to a new account.

How to create an Outlook alias:

• Log into your Microsoft account.
• Click “Your info” on the top navigation bar.
• Scroll down to the “Account info” section and click “Edit account info” on the right side of the screen.
• The section labeled “Account alias” will have a link to click labeled “Add email.”
• You have the option to create a new Outlook email address or add an existing email address as your Microsoft account alias. Whichever you choose will be your new primary email address.

How to change your email address in Gmail. Gmail has a variety of features that let you customize your email experience. From specific filtering to archiving emails, to automated filtering into folders, labels, and more. However, you can’t change your email address once you’ve created it. You’re stuck with the email address for as long as you continue to use it. You will have to create an entirely new Gmail address with your preferred name.

However, you can work around the name change limitation by setting up email forwarding, which is a free service in all Gmail accounts. Gmail allows you to set up as many email addresses as you’d like for whatever purpose you see fit. Email forwarding makes it easy to manage each email from a single address without having to hop from one account to another.

How to set up Gmail forwarding:

• Log into your Gmail account, then click the gear icon in the upper-righthand corner of your desktop window.
• Click “See all settings” from the dropdown menu.
• Along the top navigation bar, click the tab that reads “Forwarding and POP/IMAP.”
• The top section has a header that reads “Forwarding.” This is where you’ll be working.
• Click the button labeled “Add a forwarding address.”
• Input the new email address where you would like to receive your emails and click “Next.”
• Click the option “Forward a copy of incoming mail to”.
• Click the down arrow for the dropdown menu and select the new address you want to forward to.
• Select the option to the right of your old email address that fits how you would like emails handled by Gmail. Your options include deleting emails, archiving emails, leaving them as unread, or marking them as read.
• Be sure to click the “Save Changes” button before exiting, or you’ll have to go through and do it again.
• You can export the contact list from your old email address into a CSV file, then import the saved CSV file to the new account.

How to change your email address in Yahoo. Once you’ve set up your Yahoo email address, you’ve basically made your bed and have to lie in it. The only things Yahoo allows you to update is personal information like your name, nickname, gender, and birthday. Should you choose to create an entirely new Yahoo email address, you can import your contacts list by following the same steps as Gmail.

Another option: Yahoo Mail Plus, a paid service, allows you to forward emails to a new address. Without it, you would have to create an entirely new email address and keep up on both addresses individually to maintain contact or continue to get emails from your mailing list subscriptions.

So, there you have it. While changing your email address comes with some challenges, there are at least a few options or workarounds that make things simpler. Be sure to check out other email organizing hacks, like how to create eye-catching signatures, or when to use encryption, send emails as texts, how to manage spam, and more.