How to change your email address everywhere: a checklist

Changing your email address is easy. Changing it everywhere is the real job, because the address is not just where mail lands. It is the username, the receipt box and the password reset channel for most of your life online.

How do you change your email address everywhere?

Keep the old address working, build a list of every account that uses it, and update them in order of risk: the accounts that control other accounts first, then money, then government and health, then everything else. Leave the old address open for a year and update each sender that still writes to it.

The rest of this page is that plan in detail, with a checklist you can print.

Do you need a new address at all?

Sometimes the address can change while the account stays. The three biggest providers each allow some version of this. From their own help pages, as of October 2026:

Provider	What you can change	The catch
Google	Some accounts can change a gmail.com address to a new gmail.com address	The old one stays as an alternate, and you cannot create another for 12 months
Microsoft	Add a new address to the account as an alias and remove the old one	All aliases share one password and the same account
Apple	Change the primary email on your Apple Account	Changing an @icloud.com address needs iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1 or macOS 26.4 or later

Google's page on changing your Google Account email says mail keeps arriving at both the old and new addresses and nothing saved in the account is affected. You can check whether your account has the option at myaccount.google.com/google-account-email. Microsoft's alias page and Apple's page on changing your primary email cover the other two.

None of this updates the hundreds of other sites that know you by the old address. For those, read on.

Step 1: Keep the old address alive

Do not close anything yet. Many sites confirm an email change by sending a link or a code to the old address, the new one, or both. If the old mailbox is gone, you can lock yourself out of the very account you were trying to update.

Turn on forwarding from the old address to the new one if your provider offers it, and keep the copy in the old inbox. Our guide to switching from Gmail has the exact steps for Gmail, including the export and import of old mail.

Step 2: Build the list, three ways

No single method finds everything. Use all three.

Your password manager. Search it for the old address. Every hit is an account where that address is the username. If you use a browser's built-in password list, search that too.

Your inbox. Search the old mailbox for the words that sites send once: "welcome", "verify your email", "confirm your account", "receipt", "your order", "statement". Sort by sender and you have a second list. Do the same for "unsubscribe" if you care about newsletters.

Sign-in buttons. Accounts made with "Sign in with Google" or "Sign in with Apple" have no password and appear in neither of the lists above. Google shows them on its linked apps page under Sign in with Google. Apple lists them under Sign in with Apple in your Apple Account settings. These logins keep working as long as the Google or Apple account stays open. If you plan to close it, add a normal email and password login on each site first.

Step 3: Change the keys first

A few accounts can reset the passwords of all the others. Do these before anything else, in one sitting, while you are concentrating.

Your password manager. Its own login email is the one people forget most.
Your Apple, Google and Microsoft accounts. They hold your phone backups, app purchases and often your other passwords.
Recovery emails. Every important account stores a second address for resets. Check that setting on each account in this list, since it is often the old address.
Your phone carrier. Whoever controls your number controls your text message codes.
Your domain registrar, if you own a domain. A lapsed renewal notice sent to a dead address is how people lose domains.

On each one, change the email, confirm from the new inbox, sign out and sign back in with the new address to prove it works.

Step 4: Work through the checklist

Print this, or copy it into a note, and tick as you go. Skip what you do not have.

Money

Banks and credit cards
Payment apps and digital wallets
Investment, pension and retirement accounts
Loans, mortgage, student loans
Credit bureaus and credit monitoring
Crypto exchanges
Tax software and your accountant

Government and official

Tax authority online account
Benefits, social security and state pension portals
Driver licensing and vehicle registration
Passport, visa or immigration accounts
Voter registration and local council or city services
Postal service account and mail redirection

Health and insurance

Doctor, dentist and hospital patient portals
Pharmacy
Health, home, car, life and travel insurance
Vet and pet insurance

Home and bills

Electricity, gas and water
Internet, mobile and TV
Landlord, letting agent or mortgage servicer
Home security, smart home and router accounts
Toll, parking and transit accounts

Work and school

Payroll and HR portal (the personal email on file, for after you leave)
Job sites and your professional profile
Your children's school, nursery and clubs
Alumni and professional body memberships

Shopping and subscriptions

The big marketplaces you order from, and their saved cards
Streaming video, music and audiobooks
App store accounts and software licenses
Cloud storage and photo backup
Food delivery, ride hailing and travel booking
Airline, hotel and store loyalty programs

People and everything else

Social media and messaging accounts
Gaming accounts and consoles
E-readers, smart TVs and other devices signed in with an email
Shared documents, calendars and photo albums that were shared to your old address
Newsletters you actually read
Clubs, gyms, charities and places of worship
Your will, solicitor and anyone who holds emergency contact details for you

Two lines on that list deserve a note. Shared documents do not follow you: a file shared to your old address has to be shared again to the new one by its owner. And device accounts are easy to miss because you never see a login screen on a TV or an e-reader until the day it signs you out.

Step 5: Tell people without an announcement

Reply from the new address and most contacts update themselves. For the rest, set an auto-reply on the old mailbox with one line giving the new address. Send a short message to the handful of people who only write once a year.

Step 6: Use the old inbox as your to-do list

With forwarding on and a copy kept, the old inbox becomes a record of who still has the old address. Once a month, look at what arrived there since you switched and update each sender. Annual senders are the reason to keep going for a full year: insurance renewals, tax documents and domain renewals only appear once every twelve months.

When a few months pass with nothing but junk, you are done.

What happens to your old address if you close it?

This decides whether closing is ever worth it. The providers differ, and their own documents say so.

Provider	After the address is gone	Source
Gmail	The address "can't be used by anyone in the future"	Google's Gmail removal page
Yahoo	"Your username may be recycled for use by others"	Yahoo Terms of Service
Apple	A removed non-iCloud address can be linked to another Apple Account after 30 days	Apple's primary email page, linked above

Where an address can be handed to someone else, any account you forgot to update could send that person your password reset. On those providers, either finish the checklist completely before closing or keep the old account open and quiet. Keeping it costs nothing and removes the risk.

Make this the last time

Two habits mean you never repeat this job.

Use an address on a domain you own. With you@yourname.com, the address belongs to you and the provider behind it can change without anyone noticing. Our custom domain email page explains how that works.

And stop giving one address to everybody. Give shops and newsletters an email alias, and keep one address that only your bank knows. We made the case for that in a separate email for banking. Secria's free plan includes two aliases.

Frequently asked questions

Can I change my email address without making a new account? Sometimes. Google lets some accounts change a gmail.com address to a new one, Microsoft lets you add and remove aliases, and Apple lets you change the primary email on an Apple Account. Other sites still need updating one by one.

How long should I keep my old email address? At least a year, so that senders who write once every twelve months show up. If the provider can reissue the address to someone else, keeping it open for good is the safer choice.

Will I lose my accounts if I change my email address? Not if the old address keeps working while you update them. Accounts are lost when a site sends its confirmation or reset to a mailbox that no longer exists.

Do I have to change my email address if I change internet provider? Only if the address was issued by that provider. An address from your internet company usually ends when the contract does. Ask how long they keep it open, and start this checklist before you cancel.

What is the fastest way to find every account tied to an email? Search your password manager for the address, search the inbox for words like "welcome" and "verify", and check the Sign in with Google and Sign in with Apple lists. Together they catch most of them.

An evening for the important accounts, a slow year for the rest, and it is finished. If the new address is going to be one you keep, Secria's mail page shows what you get with it.