Aliases and redirects

[#1]

I have an IMAP Plusnet mailbox (call it one@bloggs.plus.com) and want to redirect personal emails to a new personal domain (new@bloggs.com).  I use Outlook 365 to access emails.

I understand that to do this I must delete my email account (losing all present emsils) and re-create it with an alias.

Can the issue of losing emails be overcome by saving the one@bloggs.plus.com.ost file (which contains all the downloaded emails) as a .pst file?

Then delete the one@bloggs.plus.com account. 

Create a new email account two@bloggs.plus.com and give it an alias one@bloggs.plus.com.  Set up a redirect from this alias to redirect future emails to new@bloggs.com?

Finally replace the two@bloggs.plus.com with the saved copy of the original one@bloggs.plus.com.ost thus making the old emails still available. 

Would this work?  If not is there another way?

Thank you

[#2]

Not sure why you would need to delete anything. Outlook 365 as a mail client is perfectly capable of dealing with multiple mail acoounts simultaneously. I assume the long term plan is to transfer all your correspondents across to new@bloggs.com.

I would leave the existing Plusnet account as it is. Add a new account to Outlook 365 ( File/Account Settings On the Email Tab click new and input the new settings). Now you will have two inboxes, and two sets of folders. One for bloggs.com, and one for bloggs.plus.com.

Any mail that comes into blogs.plus.com will be easily identifiable and you can reply to the sender giving your new bloggs.com address (if you wish - see below). Any that comes in to Bloggs.com will simply appear in the separate inbox. Over time less and less (useful) mail will come into Bloggs.plus.com and you can if you wish discontinue it.

Personally I would keep it and use it. One issue with Plusnet mail is that you can't redirect (as far as I know) the catchall mailbox.Only a mailbox with a specific name before the @

I use my plusnet email account as a "disposable" address, collectin all mail from the catchall account so that I can use emails with anything before the @. In your case, I suggest if you are asked for an e-mail address by someone who you are buying from, or registering with on a one time basis I would give them an address of the form Theirfirm@bloggs.plus.com. Keep the bloggs.com addresses for peopleand firms  you want to give some priority to.

That way you will

a) Keep all your existing mail.

b) separate out the people you want to hear from  (they will appear in bloggs.com inbox)

c) have the opportunity to use "disposable" addresses for people & fitrms you probably don't want to hear from beyond the current transaction. Their advertising will appear in the Bloggs.plus.com inbox rather than cluttering up your main one.

Hope this helps.

Another thing you could do is create a local set of folders in Outlook and then simply drag and drop mail you want to keep  across from the Bloggs.plus.com folders to the local folders. THs mail won't appear on multiple devices as it's no longer in the Plusnet mailstore. But it will be on your machine.

[#3]

Thank you Wisty, very helpful.  I have set up the bloggs.com account in Outlook and have the two inboxes.  I have checked it works with test emails.

What I need to do now is think through the logic of who and how to make the change.

One strange thing is that the account name (just above Inbox) is identical me@bloggs.plus.com for both accounts.

When I look at the Data Files tab in Account Settings the file name for both is me@bloggs.plus.com, but the locations are different the PlusNet file is called me@boggs.plus.com - NewProfile.ost and the other me@blogs.com - NewProfile.ost

It is obvious which is which as the Plusnet Inbox has lots of folders and emails and the new one very little. But confusing all the same.

[#4]

That looks like you may have set the same account up twice. If you send a test email to your plusnet email does it come up in both boxes?

Easiest way I can see to do this is to set both the .plus.com and blogs.com in outlook. You could then set up a rule on the plusnet address in outlook that any email received from a source you'd want in blogs.com is automatically forwarded straight on to that, this catching any which are sent to the plusnet address in error while people adjust to your new address.

You should end up with just the two accounts in there-you@blogs.plus.com and you@blogs.com

[#5]

@JohnMat You say "One strange thing is that the account name (just above Inbox) is identical me@bloggs.plus.com for both accounts."  Easy to change.

File/Account Settings. E-mail Tab. Select the Bloggs.com account and click change.

You should get an IMAP Account settings  pop-up. Second item down is Account Name. That is the label you get above the Inbox in the folder tree. It is simply the name you want to call the account. Change it to anything you like, click Next and then Done.

[#6]

Kdog: Yes.  Test emails in each direction appear in the other's inbox.  It does seem to be just the name that is wrong.

Wisty:  Unfortnately the new account is with Microsoft Exchange and not IMAP.  Following that procedure done not allow any editing of the account name.  I did try with the MS Outlook helpline but they were not able to change it.

Using your sggestion I can change the name of the plusnet account so at leat they will be different if incorrect!

[#7 · Accepted solution]

Had some advice over the weekend and the problem is now resolved.

Before Chritsmas I upgraded from Win7 to Wn10 and from Office 2013 to Office 365. At the time my only email was @bloggs.plus.net  so I used this for the now essential MS Office login.

When I then set up bloggs.com and set up the new email as an alias, allowing me to use it log into my MS Office account.  I then made it the primary alias, but this did not allow Outlook to change the Microsoft Exchange acount name.  So I deleted the @bloggs.plus.com as an MS alias.  

The bloggs .com address now has the right name and the PlusNet account IMAP still works.

So the conclusion is don't use an IMAP email address as an MS Office alias. It confuses Oulook.

Tnaks for your help.  it has been a learning process.

[#8]

You could have both the account one@bloggs,plus.com and new@bloggs.com set up in Outlook, then select, copy, move all the messages from one to new.

Once everything is synchronised you could then delete the one@bloggs.plus.com mailbox and recreate is as a redirect.

Then all new mail sent to one will be redirected to new, finally remove the one@bloggs,plus.com from Outlook.