True story. My first email address was the name of a character my high school friends and I created, and during a high school reunion years later, I had to write down a non-existent email at the time, (I just created it after the reunion when I went online) just so I wouldn’t have to use my very Japanese email-out of embarassment.

This was back in the early 2000s at that time who would have thought that your email address would eventually be needed for work, government forms and important documents?

Well, many naive early internet users such as myself will be relieved to know that Google has added a feature that will let you change your email address while keeping all your data, and without missing any e-mails. This could also apply for users who need to change their email address due to changes with their names or other circumstances.

This feature will be a gradual update to users. You can check if this is already available to you by going to the Google Account settings under Personal Info, then email. I just checked and I don’t have the feature yet.

Remember though that you can only change your email if your email ends in @gmail.com and the new email address should end that way as well.

The good news keeps on coming as a change in your email address means that you still keep all your data-emails, messages, photos, and will be updated to your new username. So no need to worry about needing to do a digital overhaul of all of your precious data to your new email address.

Don’t worry, your old email address won’t disappear into oblivion, Google will set it up as a secondary email or it can also be a recovery email address. This also means that you don’t need to change or update every service using your old email address, as you will still continue receiving email in your old email address.

But before you rush out and change your email, make sure that you have thought about it as Google will only allow you to change an email address in an account up to three times. Not only that but the cooldown period after changing an email address is pretty high -you won’t be able to change your email address after 12 months. So you might want to step on the brakes before changing your email address. It can be a pretty big commitment, and like all commitments, you really need to reflect on it before making any big decisions. On the other hand, having a new email in the new year does seem appealing.