For the majority of people at home or at work their a two types of emails they will be using.

The first is called webmail, where you can access you email over a Web browser like Internet Explorer and Google Chrome.  The second is a client based email program like Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird.

The big difference between them is the web mail version of email can be accessed quick and easily on any computer with a internet connection. All you need is your username and password for your email like when you go to Gmail or Hotmail.

The mail client is totally different and needs to be set up on your computer with the software, mail server setting, files and username and password. This is primarily used on one computer. It can be used on more than one computer but every machine you want to put it on will have to be setup.

How do I transfer my email to a new computer

Assuming we are talking about a client based email program, as webmail does not need to be setup, it will really depend on which email client you are using.

It would be impossible to instruct on how to use all the email client programs out there (there are new ones every day) so for the purpose of this post I am just going to go over the general settings.

Username and Password

The first thing you need to do is in your newly setup installed or download email client is to put your username and password in the fields provided.

Your username will most likely be your email address like [email protected] and the password will be the one you used when you created the account or assigned to you by the mail host/server provider.

Mail Server Settings

This one will get a little more complicated.

Your mail server settings should be available on your mail server site or can be obtained by calling your host.

You will have to mail servers; an incoming and outgoing. One for receiving new emails and the second for sending. Once you know your mail server settings you must enter them in the fields provided in your mail client along with their corresponding ports.

Email server setting will look something like this:

• pop-mail.handsome.com port 995 SSL
• smtp-mail.handsome.com port 465 SSL

Migrating your existing emails from your old computer

Now you have your email account setup, you might be luck enough that your email host will still have your old emails on their server and they will show up automatically in your newly setup email client.

If not, you will need to export them from your old email client on old computer.

On your old email client there will be a tan which gives you the option to “export” your old emails. Follow the process and prompts of how to do this and export your emails to and external usb drive.

Once that is complete you will need to put the same usb drive into the new computer and do the same in reverse, this time looking for an “import” tab and importing your emails from the usb into the new email client.

What if I am using different email clients

You can use different email clients on different computers.

The biggest problem you are going to face when using different clients made by different company’s is you might not be able to import the data from one to the other.

Some email clients provide a migration tool where you can export lets say from Microsoft Outlook into Mozilla Thunderbird, but this doesn’t always work. It is best if you can use the same version of mail client software on both computers.