Switching Gmail Usernames

Posted: April 3rd, 2010 | Author: Gordon | Filed under: technology | Tags: , , , | View Comments

Yesterday I began the task of changing my Gmail username to something a little bit more professional (gordonmzhu). The problem is that I have tons of services connected to my old handle (adsense, feedburner, analytics, etc.). I thought about this quite a bit in the past few weeks and it was enough to give me paralysis, but I think I’ve found an almost painless way to go about this. I’ll update again when I finish the process.

  • http://writegeek.com/ Everett Guerny

    I'm eager to hear what you've come up with. I've been contemplating such a change, myself.

  • http://gordonzhu.com Gordon Zhu

    Thanks for the note Everett.

  • http://www.cindypepper.com/ Cindy

    If you come up with a good way to switch GMail usernames, let me know! I've been meaning to switch mine for ages. :(

  • http://gordonzhu.com Gordon Zhu

    Haha will do. Not surprised that there is so much interest in this topic. The copy on the Google account settings pages are cryptic. Nothing like doing some old fashioned user testing and seeing what actually happens when you click the buttons.

  • http://www.tylerwillis.net Tyler Willis

    What did you find?

  • Gordon

    First I set up all mail to skip my old address and forward to my new address. After that, I moved all existing archived mail on my old address to my new one. I would try to monitor this periodically to make sure that all of your archived mail gets pushed to the new account. In my case, the process failed mid-way and I had to restart. This meant that for a portion of the archived mail that was sent to my new address, I had two copies :( . The second time though everything worked and I was set!

    Some people still email me at my old address, but I don’t even notice because the email gets forwarded to my new one automatically. I did notice though that this number decreases radically to nearly zero after a few months.

    Moving mail from another account to Gmail:
    http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=56283

    Forwarding mail to another Gmail account:
    http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=10957

  • http://gordonzhu.com Gordon Zhu

    First I set up all mail to skip my old address and forward to my new address. After that, I moved all existing archived mail on my old address to my new one. I would try to monitor this periodically to make sure that all of your archived mail gets pushed to the new account. In my case, the process failed mid-way and I had to restart. This meant that for a portion of the archived mail that was sent to my new address, I had two copies :( . The second time though everything worked and I was set!

    Some people still email me at my old address, but I don’t even notice because the email gets forwarded to my new one automatically. I did notice though that this number decreases radically to nearly zero after a few months.

    Moving mail from another account to Gmail:
    http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=56283

    Forwarding mail to another Gmail account:
    http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=10957

  • Angang Amanu

    well do you have umm a username in gmail. I am interested to add a friend …I miss my old friend that have gone at australia…so if u like too

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