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What’s the Best Way To Migrate My Mail From Live.com To iCloud.com?

I listened to your recommendation about Spam. Today my primary email is xxxx@live.com and that is listed as my Appple id. I have an email account in icloud that I never use. I use mail as the client with the 1 live.com and two gmail accounts. I’m swamped with Spam on my live.com. I’ve tried to correct specific accounts in mail and contacts (yes, I check for spoofed emails), but nothing happens so I guess all the work is done on the outlook server and Microsoft doesn’t want to listen to lil ol mail.app.

I’m going to take your recommendation of using icloud for my mail. Do you know if outlook will forward the mail to my icloud address? Once I’ve got most of my mail going directly to my new icloud account, can I put an automatic reply on Outlook to tell people of my new address?

I was looking on Apple and read something about NEVER changing you apple ID. I also read about a limit of 3 email accounts on icloud. I’ve probably misinterpreted something.

Can I create a new email account under icloud? How? Can I migrate my AppleID from my live.com to the new one on Icloud?

I also noted that there are or will be multiple new additions to Mail that will improve security. Perhaps this might be a good topic to consider.

I’m not under any timeline here. And I’m tempted to wait until I understand the new mail features before I start moving things over.

Thanks Gary. I never have one simple question to ask. I complify life!

I get far too much spam. The filters in mail don’t work which I think is because the filtering was already done on the Outlook server. I think using an all Apple solution to most of my email will simplify things and reduce spam. It will also force me to delete lots of old stuff and free up space.

Getting Microsoft and Apple to play nicely is a little like driving an oversized trailer across the Tacony-Palmyra, when it had 4 lanes.
—–
Rick Grossman

Comments: One Response to “What’s the Best Way To Migrate My Mail From Live.com To iCloud.com?”

    2 years ago

    I'm sure you can go into your live account settings and set it to forward to iCloud, but that defeats the purpose as all of that spam will be forwarded to you. iCloud may filter some of it, but since it is forwarded email not direct from the spammers, it may not get filtered as well.

    I would start using your iCloud email (or one of the gmail ones) as your main email address. Think about all of the accounts you have set up that use your old live email as the ID and start updating your accounts to the new email (banks, shopping, social media, streaming networks, etc). Also tell your friends and co-workers of the change. Keep monitoring your old live account for people or companies that still use it and update the accounts and tell those people about the change.

    After a while when you notice very little real email coming to live, and you think you have changed your accounts, just remove it from Mail so you aren't seeing the messages from it anymore. But you can still go to live.com or outlook.com (wherever the web interface is for it) to check it once a week to see if you got a piece of real email, or if you need to change an account you forgot about. Then that can be monthly or even more rarely.

    Eventually you can stop checking it, but don't get rid of the live account or close it. It does you no harm if you don't check it. So then a long time from now if you come across a site or service that needs to contact you via that old email address (like for verification or password change) you can still access it to look for that one email message.

    Don't put an automatic reply on the old account. Some spam bot may simply pick that up and start sending spam to the new location.

    To change your Apple ID email address, see here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202667

    Make sure you follow the instructions carefully.

    You get one email account in iCloud. You get aliases too, which is where you probably got that "3" number. But that doesn't apply to anything you are mentioning here. Don't create a new iCloud email account. Use your existing one that is already part of your Apple ID that you mention.

    About not being in a rush: You never have to delete your live email. So there is no rush. But you can change your Apple ID and that won't affect people's ability to reach you via live, just how you log into iCloud, iTunes, etc. Then you can start switching other accounts over and telling people who email you to use your new email address. You can do this in as many steps and as slowly as you like.

    Side note: I grew up in Northeast Philly, so the Tacony–Palmyra bridge was our route east to New Jersey! Can't believe it is still standing and in use in 2021.

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