How to tell people your email address has changed: templates

Changing your address is the easy part. The work is getting everyone who matters to write to the new one without sending your new address to every list and spammer that knew the old one.

How do you tell people your email address has changed?

Send a short personal message from your new address, BCC'd in small batches, to the people you actually write to. Then set an auto-reply on the old account that only goes to your contacts, turn on forwarding with a copy kept, and add a one-line note to your signature. Keep the old account open for at least a year.

Who to tell first

Not everyone needs an announcement, and not everyone should get one at the same time. Work in this order.

Anyone who sends you money or legal paper. Your employer, accountant, landlord, lawyer, and anyone who invoices you or pays you. A missed message here costs real money.
Clients and work contacts. People who would otherwise sit waiting on a reply from an inbox you have stopped reading.
Family and close friends. They forgive a delay, but they are also the people most likely to keep the old address in their phone for years.
Everyone else you write to by hand. Old classmates, clubs, the neighbor who emails twice a year.

Notice what is missing: shops, newsletters, apps and online accounts. Those do not get a message. You change the address in each account's settings instead, which is a separate job with its own checklist for changing your email address everywhere.

Copy-paste templates

Short wins. People skim an address-change email in two seconds, so put the new address on its own line where nobody can miss it, and say what happens to the old one. Replace the bracketed parts.

For friends and family

Subject: My new email address

Hi [name],

Quick one: I have a new email address. From now on please use:

[new@address]

My old address will keep working for a while, but I will check it less and less. Could you update it in your contacts? Thanks!

[Your name]

For work contacts and colleagues

Subject: New email address for [your name]

Hello,

Please note that my email address has changed to:

[new@address]

Mail sent to [old@address] will be forwarded until [month, year], but replies may be slower. Please update your address book and any shared distribution lists.

Thank you,

[Your name] [Title, company]

For clients

Clients care about two things: that nothing in progress gets lost, and that this is really you. Name a current project or invoice so the message reads as genuine, not as a phishing attempt asking them to send money somewhere new.

Subject: Updated contact details for [your business]

Hi [name],

I wanted to let you know that I am now using a new email address for all [your business] work:

[new@address]

Nothing else changes. [Project or invoice] continues as planned, and my phone number stays [number]. If you have any doubt that this message is from me, call me on that number before replying.

Messages to [old@address] will reach me until [month, year].

Best regards,

[Your name]

That last line about calling is worth keeping. Fraudsters send fake "our email has changed" messages to redirect payments, and a client who checks by phone is one who will not be fooled by the next fake.

For the auto-reply on your old address

Subject: I have a new email address

Thanks for your message. I have moved to a new address: [new@address]. Your email has been forwarded, but please use the new address from now on.

Send the announcement with BCC

Put every recipient in the Bcc field, not To or Cc. Anyone in To or Cc can see every other address on the message, and anyone who hits Reply All sends their answer to all of them. BCC keeps your contact list private, which matters more than it sounds: one forwarded copy of an open list gives a stranger your whole address book.

Two practical points:

Send it from the new address. When people reply, their mail app saves the new address on its own. That does more than the message text does.
Send in batches. Google says a Gmail account hits a sending limit if one email goes to more than 500 recipients, or if you send more than 500 emails in a day, and you then wait between 1 and 24 hours to send again, per its sending limits page. Other providers have their own limits, and a large single blast from a brand new address is exactly what spam filters watch for. Batches of a few dozen, spread over a couple of days, are safer.

If you send personal messages one at a time to your most important people, even better. A message with their name in it gets read.

Set an auto-reply on the old address

An auto-reply catches everyone you forgot. The catch: it also answers anyone, including spammers. If your old reply goes to every sender, you hand the new address to every list that ever scraped the old one. Both Gmail and Outlook let you limit replies to people in your contacts, and for an address change that is usually the right choice.

In Gmail

From Google's vacation responder page:

On a computer, open Gmail and click Settings, then See all settings.
On the General tab, find Vacation responder and select Vacation responder on.
Fill in the date range, subject and message. Set the end date well into the future, a year out is a sensible default.
To reply only to your contacts, check the box under the message.
Click Save Changes at the bottom of the page.

Google's rules for how it behaves are useful to know. In most cases each person gets the reply only the first time they write. They get it again if they write after four days with the reply still on, or after you edit the message. Mail that lands in spam and mail sent to mailing lists does not get a reply. Your signature appears below the reply, so make sure it does not still list the old address.

In Outlook

Microsoft's automatic replies page covers every version:

Outlook.com and Outlook on the web: Settings, then Account, then Automatic replies. Turn the toggle on, type the message, and select Send replies only to contacts if you want to limit it. Then Save.
New Outlook for Windows: on the View tab, select View settings, then Accounts, then Automatic Replies.
Classic Outlook: File, then Automatic Replies, then Send automatic replies.

Microsoft notes that if you do not set a time period, automatic replies stay on until you turn them off, which is what you want here. One trap: new Outlook does not support automatic replies for Gmail, Yahoo or other POP or IMAP accounts. If your old address is one of those, set the auto-reply on that provider's own website instead.

Turn on forwarding, and keep a copy

The auto-reply tells people. Forwarding makes sure you still get what they send while they catch up.

Gmail: forwarding is a desktop setting with a confirmation step. We walk through it, including filters for forwarding only some mail, in how to forward Gmail to another email.
Outlook.com: Settings, then Mail, then Forwarding and IMAP. Select Enable forwarding, enter the new address and save, per Microsoft's forwarding page. In new Outlook and Outlook on the web, the same page offers Keep a copy of forwarded messages.

Keep a copy on the old side. It is your record of who still writes to the old address, which is the list of people your announcement missed. Microsoft also suggests checking the Junk folder on the new account the first time, since forwarded mail sometimes lands there.

Add a line to your email signature

Your signature does the reminding for you on every message you send. On the new account, add a short line for the first few months:

Note: my email address has changed to [new@address]. Please update your contacts.

In Gmail, edit it under Settings, See all settings, then the Signature section on the General tab, according to Google's signature page. If you send from more than one address in Gmail, you can give each one its own signature.

And go the other way too: remove the old address from every signature, business card file, website footer and social profile where it appears.

How long should you keep the old address?

At least a year, with forwarding on. Most people update within weeks, but some senders only write once a year: tax forms, insurance renewals, an old friend's holiday letter. A full year catches every annual cycle.

Time since the switch	What to do
Week 1	Send the announcement, set the auto-reply, turn on forwarding with a copy kept
Months 1 to 3	Once a week, check what still arrives at the old address and message those senders directly
Months 3 to 12	Check once a month; annual senders show up in this window
After 12 months	If nothing but junk arrives, you can stop checking. Before you close the account, download a copy of the mail you want to keep

Closing an old account is a bigger decision than it looks, because the address may be the recovery email for other accounts. Change those first. If you plan to delete a Gmail account, our guide to switching from Gmail covers exporting the mail before it goes.

Start the new address the right way

If the change is a chance for a cleaner inbox, set it up so you never have to send this announcement again. Secria Mail sign-up asks for no phone number and no card, and the free plan includes 1 GB and 2 email aliases, so shops and newsletters can get an alias while friends and clients get your real address. Every message in your mailbox is protected with ML-KEM-1024 with X25519 post-quantum encryption on every plan, and you can bring your old mail with you from Settings, Import & export, and your contacts from a CSV or vCard file. More on Secria Mail.

Frequently asked questions

What should I write in an email address change notification? Your name, the new address on its own line, what happens to the old address and until when, and a request to update contacts. For clients, add a way to confirm the message is genuine, such as your phone number.

Should I use BCC when announcing a new email address? Yes. BCC hides every recipient from the others, so your contact list stays private and nobody can reply to everyone at once.

Will my old emails be lost when I change address? No, as long as you keep the old account open. Your old mail stays there, and with forwarding on, new messages reach you too. Download a copy before you ever close it.

Should the auto-reply go to everyone? Usually not. Replying to everyone shares your new address with every spammer that writes to the old one. Limit it to your contacts in Gmail or Outlook, and catch the rest through forwarding.

How long should I keep my old email address active? At least 12 months. That covers yearly senders such as tax documents and renewals, and gives you time to update anyone the announcement missed.