Ready to Ditch AOL or Yahoo Email?

With the news earlier this month that Verizon sold AOL and Yahoo, those holding email accounts with either may be wondering again whether it is time to move or consolidate their email. For those looking to bring everything under the Gmail umbrella, the steps are pretty simple. Sue walks you through how to move your mail and your contacts from Yahoo or AOL to a new or existing Gmail account here. By the way, this will also work if you are ready to leave Mindspring/Earthlink.

It is important to remember that the notification work and follow-up you need to do in order to make sure this goes smoothly are vital. Here’s what you need to do:

• Notify all of your contacts that you have changed your email address and ask them to update their address books to reflect your new email.

• Give it a month, and then check your email to see who is still sending email to your old email and reach out to them again. (The good news is you can leave behind the senders you do not wish to take with you!)

• During this month, unsubscribe and resubscribe to all the vendors and companies that you wish to keep in your new world. Don’t try to do it all at once — there’s a lot and it is a daunting task. But if you just do a few each day, you will be finished over the course of your month.

• Disconnect the old account. And, for some, stop paying for email.