One of my inactive email addresses is posted on someone's web page. It's for a different ISP than I use now. Is there a way that if anyone sends mail to that inactive address, the mail would be forwarded to my current email address?
Changing email addresses can be a real pain, and this is one of the reasons why. Be it on a web page that you can't update, or in the address books of all your friends and family, you know that someone will try to use your old email address long after you've switched it. A forwarding service would certainly be nice.
Yep. It'd certainly be nice.
But in general, while it's possible, it's not very likely, or it's going to cost you.
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When email gets sent to "someaddress@example.com", the "someaddress" part is ignored by everyone except for the mail servers at "example.com". Every mail server that isn't "example.com" simply looks at the email and says, in effect, "oh, this needs to go to example.com", and sends it there.
It's not until the mail actually gets to the servers at "example.com" that the individual email recipient is examined, and the appropriate mailbox is found, or other action taken.
The upshot is this: if forwarding is to be done, it must be done by your old ISP. No matter what, they're going to get all the email sent to your old address since it's "at" their domain. Only they can then forward it.
The problem is twofold: first, many ISPs and mail servers simply don't provide an email forwarding service. Hotmail is a good example. You can't close a Hotmail account and ask for all email that might come in on that account to be forwarded to some other email address.
Second, for those that do support it, it basically means keeping your old account open so that it can receive, and then forward, your email. Keeping it open, of course, implies that it might cost you some amount per month.
There are various email forwarding services out there, but they basically take the later approach: you give them enough information for them to keep your old account open, and they manage the forwarding process for you. I typically don't recommend them - if you're going to keep your old account open anyway, why involve someone else?
What I do recommend is owning your own domain, and using email addresses on that domain. When you purchase a domain name, most domain registrars will allow you to specify email addresses to be forwarded, and where they might forward to. So, let's say you purchase the domain "joe-example.info". When you register your domain, you can then set up the email address "joe@joe-example.info" to forward wherever you like ... your Hotmail account, your ISP-based email account, or whatever. You would also configure your email program to send from "joe@joe-example.info". Then, when you change from Hotmail to GMail, or from one ISP to another, you simply reconfigure the forwarding to the new service. Everyone using your public email address, "joe@joe-example.info", sees no difference, and all your email arrives at your new service.
Related:
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Ask Leo! - How do I send mail from my mail forwarded address?
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Ask Leo! - Can I automatically forward my Hotmail?
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Ask Leo! - Is there a way to keep my email address when I change my ISP?
Article C2403 - August 14, 2005
What steps do I take to retrieve my address book from hotmail and forward it to aol?
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I'm not aware of a way to do it automatically.
Leo
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i need to recover or change my lost/forgotten password and answer to the security key question
Posted by: chri Bay at December 6, 2007 6:43 PMPlease Help
yahoo posted an upgrade for email--when I accepted the upgrade, I lost all my folders and old email. How can I transfer all my records to the upgraded email?
Posted by: barbara lach at February 11, 2008 11:58 AMhow do i retrieve email from aol?
Posted by: louise hallett at March 19, 2008 4:06 PMDomain ownership needs to renewed. This means you MUST remember to pay the fee. If you forget/ignore reminders, an energetic scoundrel can purchase ownership. Then, you gave to bargin with the "person" to regain what Was yours.
Posted by: Bob at July 1, 2008 10:08 AMThe best way is to go into your address book or old saved emails and send your new email address to all the contacts you want to keep. Then be thankful that the spammers that were sending spam to your old address can no longer fill up your inbox. You can go to the emailchange.com but that only works if your contact goes to that site looking for you. It doesn't hurt to put your old info there, but remember that the spammers will look for you there also. At least you do get an email asking your permission to give your email to the person/company that is requesting your new email address information. I have been through this a few times, and it is not as bad as it seems at first.
Posted by: THawk at August 15, 2008 7:54 AMi had a email address from 2002 is there any way i can get in to it
Posted by: belinda at June 20, 2009 12:01 AMHaving big problem in getting my old e-mail from verizon.net I was canceled I have no land line, so now I have a new acct with yahoo.com called a dry loop NO land line req. The probem is I lost my Husband e-mail with verizon. But my old e-mail messages show up on the New Yahoo acct. How do we get the other e-mail link.? or in other words my husbands e-mail,The acct is in my user acct. HELP Thank You M.
Posted by: Marcia at October 15, 2009 12:22 AMWhat I suggest is get an email address which is NOT tied to an ISP. I know with Gmail you can have outlook express or thunderbird as your reader, rather their proprietary web interface.
Right now I have a Gmail account and can access it from pretty much anywhere in the world. I don't have to worry if I move to across the country or across the world, (though I do remember an example of a friend studying abroad living in Dunedin, New Zealand who could only access New Zealand web sites, though that was back in 97 and probably not an issue now.) I can use it with pretty much any ISP, whereas if I moved to a place where I couldn't get Comcast, Charter, Verizon or even a dial-up ISP which didn't offer service is your area, you'd be SOL- can't use it anymore. This doesn't require you to own your own domain which can cost you money, it's free. I don't know what to do however, if you give up a free email service for some reason because you don't like it, in my case it has been because I've switched ISP's. Gmail works fine for me.
There is also ef.bigfoot.com which you can have forward your email to any email address. You can get a me@bigfoot.com address and tell it where you want the mail sent.
Though, I just wish I had known this earlier. I have two accounts with @charter.net email addresses and now I suppose I will HAVE to use a forwarding service to have them forwarded to my new address as I plan to replace them with Gmail addresses.
Posted by: my suggestion at October 26, 2009 12:46 PM