Hello everyone David A Cox here with Tech Talk America and today, I'm gonna be going
over something that I know freaks a lot of people out.
Today, we're going to be talking about how to switch email addresses from an old email
address over to a new address.
We're going to be going over a lot of different simple tips and tricks that really no matter
what it is that you're going from and what you're going to, all of these tricks I'm going
to be sharing with you are basically conceptual so no matter what application you're using,
this should apply.
Now, if you get lost at all over the course of this class, keep in mind if you ever want
some private support from yours truly, you're always welcome to book a private lesson with
me through my website at techtalkamerica.com/privatelessons.
The first step in this process is of course to figure out where are you going to, so if
you already have a new email address picked out and good to go, feel free to skip this
part.
You can fast forward to that time code and we'll pick up.
For those of you however who need a little bit of advice on the subject matter, the service
that I tend to recommend these days more than anything is simply iCloud.
A lot of people out there use iCloud for some of its features but a lot of people don't
use it for email and so literally all you need to do to use iCloud for email is turn
the feature on.
You can do it either in your phone, your iPad or your Mac.
So now that you've got your account set up, I want to give you the first trick as far
as starting to inform your contacts especially the people who you correspond with on a regular
basis to let them know about this upcoming change and what we're going to basically do
is just utilize the signature feature that's built already into your email.
So the signature is of course where you would put your name, your phone number, your email
address, your website address - all of that information and if you haven't been using
it, you'll find it in the preferences.
So if we go into this feature, what we can basically do is just take whatever signature
you're already using and just bump it down a couple of lines and what you're going to
do is first put some sort of a little note to let people know about this upcoming change.
That way, every time you either reply to or create a new message, you've got that message
already out there.
The next trick I'd like to introduce you to is a little website service that I have mentioned
in past classes and today we're going to be using it but for something that it's not actually
intended for.
There's a little website service called unroll.me.
If you've never heard of it, be sure to check it out.
It's a great service where you can go and it'll basically analyze all of your emails
and find out all of those different mailing lists that you're on and give you an easy
way to keep the ones that you want and get rid of the ones that you don't want.
Today, for this purpose, we don't so much care about the unsubscribe feature, I'm more
interested in finding out what websites you do want to hear from.
So, basically, after you go through all the different websites that it senses that you
have accounts with, we want to kind of make a list - two different lists technically because
all of your websites are going to break down into these categories.
The first are gonna be websites that send out newsletters.
So, for example, like health blogs, okay.
So you want to make sure that you write down those websites so that you can go to those
websites and sign up again but with the new email address that you're creating.
The more important one though to make note of are the websites where you actually have
accounts, where you have a login and password.
The reason why you want to really make sure that you write these down is that you need
to go to each one of these websites and update the email address that is associated with
that website to reflect your new email address.
The next step is to transfer all of your old email from your old account into the new account.
Now really, the only way to do this is from a computer and if you go to do it on the Mac,
of course, you can use select all to, for example, move the Inbox, the one tip I want
to give you about doing this is that when you have both accounts there and you move
all of your old email from your old account into your new account, keep in mind that your
upload speeds tend to be slower than your download speeds.
Meaning, you need to give it time to move all of your email from one account into the
other account, and a lot of people, this is where they get mixed up, is they get impatient
or they quit the mail program before it has had time to reflect those changes and we hear
about people losing data in this process, many times that is where they screw up.
So, not only do you have to do this for the inbox but if you are the kind of person who
has folders of email that are saved, like for example, maybe you have a folder of emails
for receipts, okay, all of those individual folders, you have to do the same thing; move
them from one account to the other.
The next step is to migrate over all of your contacts and calendars.
Now this isn't going to apply to all of you but for a lot of people out there when they
have an account with someone for example like Gmail, Gmail offers more than just email.
They have an ability to store contact information and calendar data.
Once again, moving this data over from one service to the other is really gonna require
a computer because that way you can use one of the services that come with the Mac.
For example, you can launch the calendar application, import all of those calendars and then export
them into the new account.
So this is a process that has to be done for each account.
Again, for contacts, for calendars and potentially anything else that you might have there like
notes.
The next step is to let all of your contacts know of course about your new email address.
I'm gonna give you a little trick here for how to do this quickly.
Now, there's a little disclaimer here.
You can only send so many emails in one day.
This is limited based on what service you go with and also by your internet service
provider.
So, I can't tell you what the magic number is for all of you but for most people it's
around a couple hundred.
So if you have thousands of contacts, it may take a while to be able to let everyone know
about your change of email address.
But for those of you who have less than that, what you can always do is try to send it out
and worst case, if it doesn't work, you can just break it into smaller batches which you
can send out over the course of a couple of days.
So here's the quick trick, if you are using a Mac, all you have to do is go into the contacts
app and create a brand new group called Everyone.
Then take all of your contacts and drag them and drop them into that brand new group called
Everyone.
Now, when you go to create your email to let everyone know about your new email address,
here's what you're going to do.
Under the To field, send it to yourself.
Don't send it to everyone because that's just gonna cause a whole different type of chaos.
Okay, you don't want to do that.
Instead, send it to yourself and blind carbon copy it or BCC, send it to everyone else.
And you'll notice here that if I click on this little arrow, I can see that when I type
in the word Everyone, in fact, everyone I put into that group, their emails are automatically
there.
So this can save you a lot of time.
The next step is to turn on the auto forwarding feature.
No matter what email service you're going from, every email has an auto forward feature.
That just makes sure that if someone emails your old account, it sends it automatically
to the new account.
And then we have the final stage, what to do after you are through that three to six
month period.
Well, there's a couple of different things that you can do, here's what I recommend more
than anything.
First of all, I would never ever recommend that you delete an email account.
The reason why is because inevitably, there are going to be accounts out there that you
have on the web that you don't remember, and if you ever need to use the reset password
feature, guess where it's going to send that email, most likely to the account that you
theoretically would be about to delete.
So don't delete it, just know how to get into it.
This is where you can now at this point un-sync it from your computer, or you can go into
system preferences and remove it from accounts but just know that if you go in through whatever
web portal, you can still get into accessing any messages that you might need.
Now, there is one last little step.
After you're through, you feel like all your contacts know about this change, at that point
of course you're gonna turn off the Auto Forward feature, and now what I would consider doing
is turning on Auto Reply, which is basically just if anyone emails that old account, it's
gonna spit back an automatic message that says that this account has been closed.
Now, it's up to you whether or not you provide the new email address.
My advice is to maybe just stay on the cautious side here and say, "Contact me through another
means."
Like, for example, through Facebook or some other social media method.
Thanks for watching everyone.
If you enjoyed this video, I hope you'll leave a comment below.
Hit that little like button and we'll see you next time.
This is David A. Cox with Tech Talk America, class dismissed.