Verizon email to AOL
A reader asks…
I recently received an email from Verizon telling me my email account was being discontinued (I use Verizon webmail). I was given a choice of moving to AOL or another email service. I’m not sure what to do.
If you use a verizon email account for your primary email, then yes, it’s time you switched, because Verizon is ditching its branded email service. Years ago, Verizon bought AOL and so for years the company has been supporting two completely separate email systems. Verizon has decided this practice costs too much, and elected to keep AOL up and running and closing down Verizon.net email services. You can read their announcement at https://www.verizon.com/support/residential/email/migrations.htm.
Verizon gives you a few choices. You can keep your verizon.net email address by following their instructions on migrating to another email service. If you choose to switch over to AOL mail, then Verizon will transfer your calendar and contact information as well as all your saved emails and folders. The process is pretty seamless and the only change you’ll make is going to webmail.aol.com instead of webmail.verizon.com to read and send emails. You can keep using your verizon.net email address.
If you decide you don’t want to use AOL, then you’ll have to manage the migration yourself. If, for example you choose to go to Gmail, then you can use the Gmail importer to bring all your emails from Verizon over to Gmail. Visit the Gmail settings for Accounts and Import and click the Import Mail and Contacts link. Follow the on-screen instructions. Sorry, your calendar won’t get imported, for that you’ll have to go to https://www.google.com/calendar, open the Settings and choose the Import Calendar link. You’ll need your Verizon information to complete these tasks.
An alternative would be to export your Verizon email, contacts and calendar events and then import them into Google (or another service provider).
The simplest method is to have Verizon switch you over to the AOL mail platform. Things will work fairly close to the same as they did before. You can always choose to move to a different platform later on. If you do choose to go to Gmail, check out my article Gmail Organizing.
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Author: Chris Gardner
Your Tech Coach at PosiTek.net
There are currently 1284 reader comments on published articles, care to join in? Use the Leave a Comment form below/at the bottom of any existing comments. This is a good place to ask follow-on questions on this subject.
I received the notification and am not sure what to do. I currently have my Verizon email auto-forwarded to a gmail account, and I want to keep that going. Should I choose option 1 (transfer to AOL) or option 2 (go to a 3rd party)?
If you want to keep the verizon.net email address, you’ll have to do two things. Choose Option 1 and have your Verizon email account transferred to AOL, following Verizon’s instructions. Once that’s done, log in to webmail.aol.com and set email to auto-forward to your Gmail account.
This is necessary for anyone who has online accounts at other places (facebook.com, Apple ID, online banking, etc.) that are tied to the verizon.net email address. If possible, you should update your email address at those online accounts, and then you can just ignore the message and your verizon.net email account will be auto-deleted at some point by Verizon. But sometimes it can be problematic to change an email address (such as with your Apple ID and some banks), so you need to preserve the Verizon.net email address. The only way to do that is to choose Option 1 to transfer your Verizon email account to AOL. Don’t worry, you can still keep and use the Verizon.net email address, and with auto-forwarding turned on, you won’t miss a message sent to your old verizon.net email address.
I just found out today of all these changes with the verizon e-mails. I did not receive any communication by mail. I think it would have been helpful to be informed in your monthly statements. Unless I missed it…??
Would you please give me a STEP-BY-STEP guide to find my “ex” verizon e-mails? when I have my AOL on?
And, in creating a new password means that my AOL password has also changed..?
I am really confused!!
Thanks
Hi Carmen, thanks for your comment. It’s possible that your spam folder captured the email(s). Verizon has been pretty bad about notifying customers of the change, so it’s also possible you just never got sent notification. Sorry surprise. Without knowing your specific situation I can’t create a step-by-step guide for you. I’m guessing that you already have an AOL account, but recognize that the Verizon change is only for their email to an AOL account using your current Verizon email address – it won’t combine your Verizon email with your separate AOL mail.
So no, if you were able to follow Verizon’s instructions to transition your email to AOL, that has nothing to do with your pre-existing AOL account so wouldn’t affect your AOL password.
The message I and others got from Verizon said that Verizon webmail would be no longer available after a certain date (which has already passed). So now if I try to go to webmail.verizon.net, I get an error – Verizon has taken that web address down. Verizon’s email warning said this would happen, and that I needed to take action before the date or lose my email. That may be where you are now.
Your only recourse at this point is to contact Verizon.com’s (nasty) support and see if they can do anything for you. If you didn’t receive a notification from Verizon with a link to transition your email, you might be able to get them to do something. You can read their FAQs about this transition at https://www.verizon.com/support/residential/email/migrations.htm
I switched from Verizon to AOL, and everything is working fine. I have continued to use to @verizon.net as my email address since the move, and it continues to work. However, I expect AOL to require us to use @AOL.com at some time. Has AOL established a deadline for making this change?
Hi Jeff, AOL is owned by Verizon and the company has committed to supporting verizon.net email addresses indefinitely.
Hello. I migrated my verizon.net account successfully to AOL. Am I still able to create additional verizon.net email addresses, or are they now finite in that no new verizon.net addresses can be created (ex: create a new verizon.net email account for my children)?
Hi Nick, I’m not quite sure why you’d want to, since Verizon’s not longer doing email service (pushing that off to AOL), why would you want to add more addresses to a defunct service? Just add AOL addresses if you can. I see no way on either the Verizon or the AOL website to add a verizon.net email address. There might be a way to do that using the AOL app, but I don’t recommend anyone use that. Likely that’s a feature reserved for those few folks who are still paying AOL for services.
I think you can tell I don’t have a very high opinion of AOL email (even after Verizon bought them). My recommendation is that you use something other than AOL for your primary email services. Gmail is a good alternative and you can have as many accounts as you want.
I also did not receive a notification from Verizon. I have activated an AOL.com email account and it seems to be working fine. My issue now is figuring out how I can import everything (emails and folders) from my inaccessible Verizon account to my AOL account. It appears that all of my contacts has already automatically been migrated. I’m now living in the Philippines, so hopefully I can get this resolved without having to all Verizon or AOL tech support. Thanks for all you do Chris!
Sorry Kevin, you are very much late to the party. Verizon left things running for quite a while during the transition last year so folks could access their Verizon email and also automatically transfer contacts & email from the old account to the new AOL account. At least here in the US east coast, they shut down the Verizon mail servers last year and anyone who hadn’t transitioned was assumed to have moved to a different email service – no old emails were saved by Verizon.
If you created a new AOL account independently without the Verizon transfer, I’m not sure how you’d access the old emails that were at Verizon. But since you say your contacts did transition over to the new AOL account then you probably did follow a migration procedure from Verizon to AOL. It can take up to a month for all your emails to get copied over to the new server (assuming Verizon still has your old stuff).
I should say that email services are pretty much you get what you pay for. Even though you were probably paying Verizon for internet service, getting email service was incidental, so not really a well-supported function for Verizon (and likely a money sink for them which is why they got rid of it). Free email service is worth what you pay for it. Many folks who used Verizon did it with an app like Outlook which downloaded the emails from Verizon’s servers to their computer, so when Verizon email died they didn’t lose anything. Folks who depended on webmail were left holding the bag.
Thank you for the information, and your quick response Chris. Much appreciated.
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