Obviously this state of affairs can't continue, I need to change my email address, but there are a couple of problems with that:

  1. So much of my life is tied to this account. I have an android phone (so all my contacts are stored with google), I use chrome as my browser, it's the backup email for my work/school email, I've used it to sign in to so many random websites, etc. I mean, you know how google is.

  2. How do I even find an email address I like? So say I take the plunge, figure out how to transfer contacts, change everything else that needs changing. The number of already-taken gmail accounts must be astronomical. How do I find one that's not like "69420communist_theydy42069" or something equally ridiculous?

Halp pls.

  • ancom20 [none/use name]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Q1: This will take a while. I would say first download everything from the account, there should be an option to do this. It will be a large file. IDK if you used Google as the signin or just entered the email address for the different websites, if it's the latter you would have to go to each website and go into your account settings and update it to the new email address. (Which may take awhile, if you use the one-click Google signin to 3rd party websites I'm not sure if you can update it). You could also not change any of that and just set it to forward to your new account once you have it, and not actually check the account. On Android, if you add another GMail account (without removing the first account), I think you can have it upload your contacts and files from the phone to the new account (not sure exactly how to do this).

    Q2: Unfortunately, trial and error. If you want to spend the money and buy a domain & pay Google for email hosting, you could have a Google-hosted (Google Apps) email that (I think) integrates with the other Google products, is totally custom, but is not a "at Gmail dot com" address. If not, will just have to keep trying combinations. Could pick something about your personality or hobbies rather than your name as the actual address.

    Hope that helps.