It’s hard to move from an email account you’ve used for years, but there’s a simple way to make the move easier.
The main reason why Internet Service Providers give email accounts with all their connections (dial-up or broadband) is to make it harder for you to switch to another connection. If you’ve used their ISP email address for years, your address is all over the web and finding all those web sites and people is hard.
Internet access is a commodity that’s little different between providers so they need a way to keep you from switching to a rival for a better deal. An email account that only works while you have an Internet connection with the same company has been the ISP’s trick for years.
Happily, there’s a way to make the move less painful. Gmail, Outlook.com, Office 365 and Yahoo all offer ongoing Import or ‘fetching’ services.
These services will check our ‘old’ email accounts (like ISP hosted email) for newly arrived mail and automatically copy it to your new mail host on their service. This usually happens each hour for as long as you have it setup. For example, your email to your address with RoadRunner in the US can appear in your Gmail account instead. The original sender doesn’t know it’s happened.
Fetching is in addition to one-off Import features to transfer email from one host to another.
Similar service – Different Names
All the major email hosts have a fetch or connect service under different names and sometimes obscure menus. Here’s a quick guide with links to more info.
Gmail
calls it Mail Fetcher and can grab email from up to 5 other accounts at Settings | Accounts and Import | Add a POP2 mail account you own.
Outlook.com
Let’s you send and receive messages from other accounts but you can choose not to use the Send option. This feature hiding under Options | Your email accounts | Add a send-and-receive account.
Office 365
has Connected Accounts.
Yahoo Mail
Go to Options | Mail Options | General | Add
The alternative for services that won’t ‘fetch’ new messages like Exchange Server. Go to your ISP’s or other mail account settings online and hope to find a ‘Forward’ option that will automatically send a copy of new messages to another address. Not all mail hosts have automatic forwarding which is one reason why the Gmail and Office 365 options are preferred.
Another, clumsy, alternative is to use Outlook software. Setup Outlook to get email from the ‘old’ account and have new message put directly into the Inbox of your preferred service. This adds work to Outlook and only works while the software is running. Use as a last resort!
