Lovely Advice: Handling the Email Name Change {If You Change Your Name}

{moshie creations}

Hi! Happy Thursday! I’m counting down the minutes to Kali & Duncan’s wedding this weekend, but wanted to give you the quickest piece of advice today before I sign off.

For those of you who are planning on changing your name (some of you may have already done this), you are probably dreading the email change, because you’ve had the same email for years, everyone knows that one, and you don’t want to lose all the contacts associated with it, right?

Well, you don’t necessarily have to change your email address! What I did was change my name on my personal email, but I didn’t replace my old email with my new name. Sound confusing? Here’s what you have to do:

gmail:

1. when in your email, click “options” in the top right corner (looks like a circle) and then select “mail settings”
2. select the “accounts and import” tab
3. find the “send mail as” section and click edit
4. change your name to your married name (or whatever you want it to show up as). Your emails will now show up as “Jane Smith” but your email might still read “janedoe@gmail”.

yahoo:

1. when in your email, click “options” in the top right corner and then select “mail options”
2. select “account information” all the way at the bottom
3. re-enter your password
4. select “update your contact information”
5. change your name to your preference

Now whenever you send an email, your new name will show up in the “From” field, but your old email address will remain the same. It gets the point across without having to start all over with a new email :) Easy, right!

Now while I think this is helpful for personal accounts, for business reasons, if you think your new name would make more sense for the long run, lovely reader Allison brought up a good point, saying “What do you do: on your resume, with new people you meet, in 35 years when you’ve had your new name longer than your old name.” Here’s her approach to switching your email in gmail:

1. Set up a new gmail account for jane.smith@gmail.com
2. In your old email (i.e., jane.doe@gmail.com) go into accounts and settings and click on “Forwarding and POP/IMAP”
3. Click on “add a forwarding address” and add your new address.  Go through the steps (i.e., verifying address, and setting it up).  I like to forward a copy to the new address and archive. (I haven’t done this in a few years, there is an option somewhere to forward ALL your email to your new address, do this so all your archives will be in your new account).
4. Start sending your email from your new email address, with your new name that matches your new email!  Make sure the “reply-to” field is always your new address.  People’s contact lists will sort of organically update themselves over time!