My father finally got high speed at home.  Now it is not like they were avoiding it, it was simply not an option until a WiMAX provider came around.

So I asked him if he has cancelled his dial-up and he said no.  Why?  Well it is because he has had the same email address from the very beginning (10+ yrs).  You know the one, user@serviceprovider.com, and it is the one that everyone has.  He has signed up for some free web accounts since, but most people on his mailing list don’t have them.

I told him that there is an easy way to ease people into using the right email, and it is really easy if you use Gmail.  So if you don’t have a Gmail account, get one.  You will need it for the rest of this tutorial.

This post will describe how to:

1. Add a POP Account to your Gmail
2. Add a signature to all your emails so that people know to update their contact information for you.
3. And that’s it.

Adding a POP Account.

Since you probably use Outlook, Thunderbird or another email program to download your emails from the ISP servers, you most likely use POP to access them.  So go into the email settings of your program and write down your POP server.  It will most likely be either mail.serviceprovider.com or pop.serviceprovider.com.

You will also need your username and your password.

Now sign into your Gmail Account and go to Settings > Accounts

And click Add a mail account.

Fill in the email that you are planning on getting rid of in the future.

This is where you need to dig out that information that I mentioned above.  You are going to want to click the Label Incoming Messages check box.  This will allow you to keep track of the people that are still emailing you to your OLD email address.

Now you simply click the Add Account button and you should be done.

Next you are going to make sure that every time YOU send an email you will be from your NEW address.  To do this you go back to the Accounts tab and activate the radio tab with “Always reply from default address” just make sure that the Default address is the one that you plan on using.

Setting up a Signature

Now you are going to Settings > General and modify your signature.  You are going to want your signature to be clear that you are going to be changing your email address and in the near future you will not be able to receive emails from the old one.

Now What

Well that is pretty much it.  You are going to want to keep your old email active for a month or so.  Monitor the old email label and remind people that are still emailing you to the old address.

If you have any questions ask them in the comments, and I will do my best to help you out.

And if you have other ideas on how to do this let me know in the comments.