I've been with one provider (SBC Global/AT&T) for about five years. I have a decent offer to switch to a competitor. My question is regarding email.

If I terminate my service with SBC, what happens to all the email documents I have saved in files?

Are they simply gone?

Will I still have access to them?

Is there some type of equipment I would have to purchase to transfer the emails and folders to my new service provider?

Get a thumb drive, save all your emails to that

if you're using outlook and storing the emails on your machine, you shouldn't have to do anything. you'll still use outlook. you'll just change which email server you connect to and your account info. i wouldn't think you'd even notice a difference.

now, if your email is stored on your isp email server, that's different. i'd ask them.

Russ,

This ought to be a simple matter of changing your email address........nothing else should change (unless you had to go to a WEBSITE to get your emails).

Depending on your settings on Outlook, it should be straight forward.

Standard settings should download all your e-mail to your computer in an Outlook file somewhere. So changing IPS's should only require you to reset the POP, STMP addressees.

You'll have to go into the tools menu of outlook and enter in your new e-mail addresses, user name, passwords and such but your e-mail messgs should be fine.

Here's a couple links

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/IE/community/columns/mailserver.mspx 

http://www.quarella.co.uk/email/newaccount.html 

As mentioned above, visit the FAQ of your new provider. They might have some "--- for Dummies" or some special things you need to do

Few different answers. Here's another one: I haven't the first damn clue.

Sombody ping TG!

^

HA!

Just call your provider and let them know about the new offer from a competitor and normally they will work something out with you and you won't need to worry about the loss of files.

This is exactly why I'm telling my wife to go with a GMail account. Nothing to keep me tied down and no hassle when I want to switch again.

1. There are several different ways. One is to use a free forwarding service and forward the ones you want to save to the new address. This also helps to get people caught up if they are still using the old address. However, to move a large amount of emails, this is tedious.

Another way is to copy them to a hard drive or removable drive. While these instructions refer to Outloook Express, something that was 86'd by Microsoft for email, from your query, I'm guessing you use the domain provided by your ISP. This is a good example of why that is some times problematic, but the instructions will likely work regardless of your domain or client. It's pretty close to what I would have replied, so I'll be lazy and just link some instructions:

http://www.steve.maurer.net/tutorials/email_tutorials/saving_email.htm 

2. If that doesn't do it, or you are looking for a free email forwarding service, Google is your friend.

3. I know it is a bummer, but if you're going to insist on trading child p0rn via email, the government will get you. Changing ISPs won't help.

Clarification...Microsoft killed OE for use with Hotmail. I have no idea whether they allow use with other domains or email sevice providers.

Looking at the headers on one of your old emails now. Looks like you were using the web interface (through your browser) to access your mail. This would normally be a problem, and it still might be, but your mail is on sbc-yahoo, so you might just be able to convert your account from *******@sbcglobal.net to *****@yahoo.com since they are the same servers. If you can do that, then your email should stay in the account and you wouldn't lose anything.

Not really sure though, as I've never run across this type of request, so I'll see if I can dig something up in their docs if you can port your email account from sbcglobal to yahoo.

Any email saved to your computer will be unaffected by the ISP change.

^Tru dat. Seems to me that there used to be a good free program or two out there that would backup email. Not sure if that could be used to dump into a new account or not. Might be worth a look at da Google.

Couldn’t you download, install, and configure an e-mail reader (Outlook Express, Thunderbird, Windows Live…) on his computer then using this download his e-mails from sbc’s server onto his computer?

Then he would be all set to go.

Looks like you get to keep your *****@sbcglobal.net email address and your online mail.

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r22653837-Keep-sbcglobalnet-or-attnet-email-address-after-DSL-cancel 

Seems to be a bit unclear regarding if you keep the @sbcglobal.net address forever or you have to convert it to a @yahoo.com (or one of their other domain options) after 60 or 90 days, but it seems that if you do convert the address, all of your mail, contacts and settings migrate (I would hope so, it's the same damn servers - just different domains).