Can I Automatically Send Mail to Another Email Address from AOL?
By John Lister
AOL was once among the most popular ways to get online, offering a dedicated software package that included both Web access and an email service. The company no longer offers this software, so if you want to access your AOL email, you need to visit the company's website. If you now use a different email provider but would like to carry on getting any messages sent to your AOL account, you can usually do so through your new provider.
Forwarding
At one time it was possible to change settings within your AOL account to automatically forward incoming messages to a different email account. AOL has now removed this feature, which means the only way to automatically get those email messages (other than to manually visit the AOL site) is to have your new email service actively retrieve the messages from AOL.
Gmail
Gmail offers a tool called Mail Fetcher that can collect messages from other accounts. To access this, open Gmail and sign into your account, click the gear icon, select "Settings" and finally click the "Accounts and Import" tab. From here, click on "Add POP3 email account." You'll need to provide your AOL account email address and password. You'll also get a series of options including whether or not to leave a copy of the message on the AOL account, and whether you want to use Gmail to send replies to these messages using your AOL address.
Hotmail
Microsoft's Hotmail service (also known as Windows Live Mail and Outlook.com mail) lets you import messages from AOL. To do so you'll need to visit your Hotmail account and select "Options | More Options | Send and receive from other e-mail accounts | Add an e-mail account." The only details you should need to provide are your AOL address and password. Note that for your AOL address, which you put in the "E-mail address" field, you need to type the entire address (such as examplename@aol.com), rather than just the screenname.
Other Email Services
Many webmail services and email applications can collect messages from your AOL account. The precise instructions will depend on the application, but in most cases you'll need to provide certain details about your AOL account. These include the type of mail server (IMAP), the incoming mail server name (imap.aol.com), the outgoing server name (smtp.aol.com), the account name (your AOL screenname) and the account password.
References
Writer Bio
A professional writer since 1998 with a Bachelor of Arts in journalism, John Lister ran the press department for the Plain English Campaign until 2005. He then worked as a freelance writer with credits including national newspapers, magazines and online work. He specializes in technology and communications.