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Ask HN: Strategy for changing your primary email?

26 pointsby gurgusover 5 years ago
Hi there!<p>For reasons (mostly that the domain I&#x27;m using isn&#x27;t really appropriate anymore), I&#x27;m considering changing my primary email address.<p>If you were wanting to change your primary email what would your strategy be?<p>Ideally:<p>- All emails hit your new inbox - All logins that require email are using your new email address<p>How would you ensure you haven&#x27;t missed anything?<p>Would you ever decommission your old inbox?<p>I&#x27;m not sure if I&#x27;m missing anything else here.<p>Thanks in advance for any input!

7 comments

sydney1over 5 years ago
Forward $old to $new<p>Setup a filter in $new email that labels all mail received on the $old address, so you know where you need to update your email address<p>Keep this until you don&#x27;t have any more emails coming in with that $old label for ... however long you&#x27;re comfortable, 6 months, 1 year, forever. Unless there&#x27;s a reason you need to decommission the $old one, I&#x27;d just leave it there
jolmgover 5 years ago
&gt; How would you ensure you haven&#x27;t missed anything?<p>This probably isn&#x27;t of much help now, but adding accounts as they are created to a list, like a password manager, helps to ensure you don&#x27;t miss any in situations like this.
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DreamSpinnerover 5 years ago
Quite some time ago, I needed to do a big cleanup of email aliases (I have 500+) and various<p>My approach was to use IMAP integration with my provider to copy all the emails down to my laptop.<p>I then used VBA in Outlook to create a list of source email addresses and counts - then I could update places using those emails.<p>In your case, i&#x27;d do something similar.<p>Analyse your existing emails to get a list of emails by source address (or domain).<p>Use that list to figure out what places you need to get updated.<p>Then (per Sydney1&#x27;s suggestion) - forward old emails to the new address. Preferably tag it somehow so you know that it means there are other places that need to be updated.
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mikebosover 5 years ago
I did this a while ago for my own and my wife&#x27;s email and ten years ago I changed from .nl to .com for the domainname which is effectively the same thing :-) For both it&#x27;s forward and forget, I changed some services to reflect the mail change, most I didn&#x27;t bother. After 5 maybe 6 years no e-mail came through the old address anymore. So if you have the time and the couple of $$ to keep it up it&#x27;s a minor issue, it&#x27;s self cleaning to a large extent.
sp332over 5 years ago
Setting up automated forwarding would cover your &quot;ideal&quot; needs. That way you can gradually change your logins and make sure that all email sent to old &amp; new addresses end up in one inbox.
helijover 5 years ago
Slowly move all your stuff (user acc around the net) to new domain&#x2F;email and once 1 year passes with no new emails to your old mailbox, trash it.
felix_thursdayover 5 years ago
if i were moving my primary to a gmail account, i&#x27;d setup the &quot;send mail as&quot; thing to receive all the email in your new account, set-up a filter to automatically label it as such, and then set a super strong password w&#x2F; 2FA on your previous acct.