How to change email, address and mail account

Change email address it can be a painful step like changing phone numbers, forcing us to check two addresses for a long time and divulge the change to whoever writes to us or receives our mail on a regular basis. In reality, even if there are sometimes limitations, the change of email can be really painless, both if we want to keep only the new email address, and if we want to keep both the old and the new service.
Who should change email is certainly those who still use the one created when we were teenagers (with strange and unlikely names!), Those who use the university email, those who use the company email to communicate with friends or for social media and even those who use services emails from national Internet providers, which in our view are still inferior to international services such as Outlook and Gmail.
So let's see how to change email, address or mail account in a few simple steps, within everyone's reach (even novice users).

How to change email, address or mail account

To go to a new email and take advantage of the power of Gmail or Outlook.com, with a new address or even keeping the old one (which is absolutely possible), you need to perform all the steps described in the chapters below, so that you can do things right and avoid duplication or errors.

Create a new email with Gmail or Outlook

First we create a new mailbox on Gmail or Outlook; in both cases the creation of the new mailbox is free will take us very little time.


Once the page for creating a new account is opened, we choose the new e-mail address using clear and legible names (our name and surname is also fine with the addition of the date of birth or other personal details), we choose the name of domain (in Outlook we can choose between Outlook.it, Outlook.com and Hotmail.com), we choose the new access password and confirm the data on our identity, so as to make our new email personalized.
In this regard, we invite you to read our guide on how Create an Email Address: Best Free Email Services for more details.

Import the old emails into the new email service

After creating the new email account, we will have to import the old important emails, so as to make them available also on the new account. If we use an old email account with IMAP support, the import is really very simple:

• If we use Gmail as a new account, open the main page of our new mailbox, click on the gear icon at the top right, click on Settings, go to the tab Account and import then we click Import messages and contacts; we enter the access data of our old email and wait for the import of all messages and old saved contacts.
• If we use Outlook as a new account, open the page of our new mailbox, press the gear icon at the top right, scroll down the sidebar until you find the item View all Outlook settings, click on Mail -> Synchronize email then click on Other email accounts. We enter the login credentials and, once the mail is synchronized, we post your emails in the folders offered by Outlook.

If we use Outlook as a program on the PC (along with Office), we can also import old emails managed on it moving the PST file, as described in the official Outlook guide.

Set automatic forwarding of messages from the old to the new mailbox

Now that the new email account is set up and we have imported the old emails, we need to configure the old email inbox to ensure that forward the new emails to the new account, so you don't have to go crazy between two, three or four different accounts. If the old accounts were based on Gmail and Outlook, the procedures to use are as follows:

• On the old Gmail we open the main page of our new mailbox, click on the gear icon at the top right, click on Settings, let's go to the tab Forwarding and POP / IMAP then we press on Add forwarding address; enter the new address (Gmail or Outlook) and confirm, so as to immediately forward each new email to the new mailbox.
• On the old Outlook we open the page of our new mailbox, press the gear icon at the top right, scroll the sidebar until you find the item View all Outlook settings, click on Mail -> Forwarding, enter the code for two-factor authentication, apply the check mark to the item Enable forwarding and fill in the Forward email to field with the new email address.

If we have other proprietary mail services (such as the email service of TIM, Alice, Fastweb or other operators), we personally check in the mailbox settings if it is possible to set forwarding or automatic forwarding.

Send email with the old address on the new account

The new mailbox is practically ready, as we have imported all the messages and forwarded each new message from the old mailbox, so that only the new address can be used to manage all the mail. The only setting left to configure is the ability to use the old email address when we send a new message: in this way we will be able to reply again with the old email from the new service, without having to open a dedicated webmail page each time (just use Gmail and Outlook for everything!).
To set the old email address for sending new messages, we recommend that you follow the steps below:

• Your Gmail, let's go back to the gear-shaped menu at the top right, press again on Settings, let's go to the tab Account and import, we press on Add another email address in the Send message as field and enter the credentials of the old mail account (with SMTP support). From now on we can choose with which e-mail address to send new messages, both in the writing phase and from the menu seen above.
• Su Outlook, just repeat the steps already seen to import the old emails: open the page of our new mailbox, press the gear icon at the top right, scroll down the sidebar until you find the item View all Outlook settings, click on Mail -> Synchronize email then click on Other email accounts.

To manage every aspect of the old mailboxes on Gmail and Outlook, we can also add them as multiple mailboxes, as seen in our guides on how Import and manage other Email accounts in Gmail with multiple mailboxes and how Combine all Email addresses into one on Outlook.com.

Conclusions

After changing the e-mail address, all that remains is to update all social or personal accounts by accessing the various websites and changing the information on the e-mail account used to access the service; unfortunately this work cannot be made automatic and must be done one by one. All the operations we have shown you are also valid for mobile app in Gmail e Outlook, both available for both Android and iOS / iPadOS.

If we wish to carry out also the transfer of the address book we advise you to read our guide on how import Email addresses and contacts into Gmail, Yahoo Mail and Outlook.
In another guide, we showed you how Set up Gmail in Microsoft Outlook, Thunderbird and Windows 10 Mail, so you can use Gmail accounts on any computer in use.