What about your old emails? The simplest way to bring them over is to set Gmail to download them from the old account to the new one. Click back to the main settings page, then scroll down to “Vacation responder.” You can then instruct Google to send change-of-address messages to people who email you at the old address. To configure Gmail to do that, log into Gmail on the web, click the gear icon at the top right, choose “Settings,” and click the “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” tab. Otherwise, you have to create a new Google account, then set your old Gmail account to forward messages to the new one. Things are much more of a mess at Google’s Gmail if you don’t have a new e-mail address at another mail service, which you can set as your alias there.

( Disclosure: I write for Yahoo’s Yahoo Finance news site, but I have zero input into the workings of the company’s email service.) To create a new address linked to your existing account, log into Yahoo’s webmail page, click the gear icon at the top right, click “Settings,” click “Accounts,” click your Yahoo account and scroll down to “Extra email address.” You can then make that new address your default under the “Writing email” settings category. On that page, create a new address, then click the “Make primary” link to have that become your ongoing identity on Microsoft’s service. Sign into your webmail, click the gear icon at the top right, choose “Connected Accounts,” and then scroll down to “Manage or choose a primary alias.” The job is easiest at Microsoft’s, where you can create a new “alias” for your account that has a new e-mail address but keeps all your messages and contacts in the same place. Not necessarily-and even then, that doesn’t have to come at the cost of abandoning your old address overnight. Do I have to open an entirely new email account to fix that?Ī. I’ve gotten married and changed my name, but my email address includes my maiden name.

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