In March I suggested that it was a bad idea to use an email address supplied by your ISP such as a btinternet.com orsky.com email address. If you use such an address, then then you’re trapped with your broadband service provider because you cannot move your email address to a new provider like you can with a phone number.
If you have found yourself relying on an ISP address for a long time, then now might be the time to think about anindependent address toreleaseyou from this bind. Gmail, outlook.com and many other companies run great free-for-lifeemail services.Startby signing up for a new address at one of their websites.
Once you’ve got a nice new email address,you can emailall your regular correspondents to let them know of your newaddress. This may take severalattemptsto get everyone to update their records.It’s a good idea to initially emailthemfrom your old address, as an unannounced email from a new addressmight look suspicious.
Nowlook at the regular business mailings you getfromsuppliers likeyour electricity provider, bank, amazon, PayPal, thecouncil, water authority, etc. For each oneyou shouldlogin to your online account and update your contact details there.
Then have a lookfor the newsletters you receive and see which ones you would like to retain. Go to the company andsignup again using your new email address.
Once you’ve told everyone about your new address you’ll need to keep checking your oldaccountfor a few monthstomake sure you’ve caught everyone. Undoubtedly some of your friends and family may have forgotten about the changeso remind them again and continue checking the oldaccountperiodically.
You may want to copy your address list over to your newaccount, there is often a way to export the list fromtheold andimport it into the new.This isa great time to have a tidy up too and get rid of any old or unnecessarycontacts.
It’ssometimespossible to copy emailsover to a new platform, such asthe contents of your inbox,sent items, deleteditems and stored folders. This can be a little complicated depending on the platform, and would probably involve using anemail client program like outlook or thunderbird.After about three or four months you should be left with just a handful of newsletters and spam emailsdripping in,continue checking until you’re sure everyone hasupdated their recordsand then you’ll beready to decommission the oldemail account. You can ask your old provider to turn off your oldaccountand this will cause a bounce message to be sentto anyone who still uses your old address, reminding them that you’ve moved.
It’s sometimes possible to setup a forwarding rule on your oldaddressto automatically send email to your new address.This isconvenient to ensure you don’t lose any emails, butdoesn’tencourage your friends to update their contact lists.