How to manage emails from different ISPs

Q Is there a way I can send and receive messages sent to my current email address if I change my Internet Service Provider (ISP)?

I presume that my new ISP will give me a new email address, but all my personal email, the newsletters I receive and the shopping websites I use are all tied to my current email address.

Anne Smart

A Nearly all ISPs will prevent you using their servers to send email unless you are connected to their network as an active subscriber. Usually, this restriction does not apply to receiving email, so you can continue to read your messages no matter which ISP, computer or email software you are using.

It is not always feasible to update your accounts on all the websites that send messages to your old email address to use your new one, although it’s still good practice to ensure that your account is updated with your new email address for websites that you use regularly, in case you forget your password, or need support.

You can set up most email programs to use multiple accounts. To add a new account in Outlook Express, click Tools, then Accounts to list all the email accounts on your PC. Click Add, select Mail, then enter the name you would like to appear on emails you send.

Click Next, enter your new email address, click Next again, enter the details for your new inbound and outbound email servers, the details of which your ISP should have told you. Click Next and enter the username and password for that account.

Click Next again, then click Finish, and your new email account will be listed in Outlook Express. If this is the email account with your new ISP, select it by clicking on its name, then click Set as Default on the right. Now, all new emails you create will be sent from that account and emails sent to both your new and old accounts will appear in your inbox.

In Windows Live Mail, Microsoft’s replacement for Outlook Express that is included as part of the Windows Live Essentials download, adding a new email account is slightly different. First press Alt to display the hidden menus, then from the Tools Menu, select Accounts as before. Click Add, select E-mail account, click Next, then fill in the details. Click Next again, then fill in the details of your new ISP’s email server.

However, if you reply to an email sent to your old account, most email programs will try to use that same account to send the reply, and if you are not connected to that ISP the message will not be sent and the server will come back with an error message.

In Outlook Express, you can remedy this by clicking the arrow at the end of the From field at the top of an email to select which account to send the message from. This is tedious if you receive lots of emails though, and without sorting the emails depending on which account they have been sent from, it’s easy to forget to do this.

There is a much better solution though. In Outlook Express, once again click Tools, then Accounts. Click on your old account, then click Properties. Enter your new email address in the Reply To field, then click the Servers tab.

Instead of using your old ISP’s servers for both incoming and outgoing email, you can update the account so that if it attempts to send mail, it uses your new ISP rather than the old one. Enter the address of your new ISP’s outgoing mail server (for example, smtp.virgin.net) in the Outgoing Mail field, but leave the Incoming Mail field as it is.

Then tick the box next to My Server Requires Authentication, then click Settings. Enter your username and password for your new ISP’s email server in the box, click OK then click OK to close the account properties.

In Windows Live Mail, again press Alt to display the standard menus, click Tools, then Accounts. Then, as with Outlook Express, click your old email account, click Properties, open the Server tab then fill in the details of your new ISP’s outbound email server.

Tick the box at the bottom, click settings, then enter your login details for the new ISP. Click OK, then OK to close the properties window.

Now if you click ‘Reply to any messages’, no matter which account they are sent to, you will reply via your new email address.

Baffled by jargon? See our free online Jargon Buster.