Google is everywhere, literally everywhere you look – the company has become so big that almost all the famous services on the Internet and even the Android OS is owned and controlled by it. Since we actively use most of these services, it’s not surprising that we need to have a Google account. It just syncs all of our data from all services in one place. It’s a pretty convenient thing.
And since the Google account is our face on the Internet and, moreover, everyone who uses all of these services from Google can see our name and photo, as well as me – theirs. From this, we can conclude that our names and photo can affect the way we communicate and be seen on the Internet. But what do you do when your name was originally wrong and you want to change it?
What is Google Account
Coming to the Internet, newcomers don’t yet know what a Google account is or what role it serves. Let’s look at this question in detail. In simple terms, a Google account is a simple account. However, thanks to this account, the data for logging in to other Google services is saved. This is what this account is for. That is, once you create one Google account, you can use the following Google services:
- Gmail.
- Google Play.
- YouTube.
- Google Photos.
- Google Drive.
- Calendar.
- Contacts.
- And others.
You can use these resources for free, and you don’t need to install Google on your computer. It’s enough to go to the search engine in any browser and create an account. To register, you need to enter your data: name, surname; user name of your e-mail address yournamehere@gmail.com; password; date of birth; gender; phone number; alternate e-mail, and country.
It should be noted that the operating system Android itself belongs to the company Google and it also owns a lot of other services, access to which will happen automatically. It’s only necessary to create an account, all your data, including passwords, will be synchronized on another device. This is very convenient because you don’t need to transfer files from one device to another via USB, etc.
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How you can change a Google Account name
Now let’s see if it’s even possible to change the name in the Google Account. The answer is yes, you can, but it should not be confused with the Gmail display name. The latter one is displayed to your recipients when you send them emails. It differs from the common name in that you can configure it separately through the Settings in Gmail. But this is not about that now. Let’s see how you can change your Google Account name:
- Lunch your preferable web browser and open the Google Account site. Then, log in to your account.
- You’ll see at the left sidebar the “Personal Info” bar. Click on it.
- On the right, in the “Basic Info” section, click your current account name.
- Click the “First Name” field and type your new first name. Select the “Last Name” field and enter your new last name.
- Then click “Save” to save your changes.
This name will now appear in Google services. For example on YouTube – when you decide to leave a comment on someone’s video, so all other users who read the comments section there will be able to see your Google Account name (which at the same time is your YouTube account) and profile photo. Don’t like your photo? No problem, you can easily change it too.
How to change a profile pic on Google Account
When you realize that your Google Account photo is out of date or you just want to change it to a better, newer one, it’s not that hard to do. You can download a new photo from your computer or the Internet with one click. Besides, Google offers you default images, which by the way look very good. Here’s how you can easily update your Google Account photo:
- Go to myaccount.google.com and sign in to your Google account.
- From the left menu pane of your Google account home page, select Personal info.
- In the Profile section, select Photo.
- Select Change Photo, and then choose Select a photo from your computer, or drag a photo from your desktop to the upload box.
- There’s an option to enlarge, edit, or crop your photo and add a caption if you like. When you’re happy with it, select Set as a profile photo.
When you change the photo, it often happens as if nothing has changed. However, this is not the case, so don’t rush to refresh the photo. Try clearing the cache in your browser and refreshing the page again. Or just restart the browser.
What about changing your email address on Gmail
There are certain reasons why you need to change your email address, but it’s not that simple. Here you should understand that if you change your email address, all your subscriptions and synchronization with other services can be disrupted. This is why Google doesn’t have the option of changing your email address. However, you can create a new email address and import all your correspondence and data into it. Read the guide carefully and you will succeed:
- Create a new Google account and sign in to it.
- Click the gear icon on the top right corner of your screen, and then select See all settings.
- Click the Accounts and Import tab.
- Then, under Import mail and contacts, click the Import mail and contacts button.
- A new window will pop up. Type in your old email username, and click the Continue button.
- The new window will ask you to sign in to your old account. Sign in to it, and then click the Continue button.
- A new window will pop up and ask you to choose an account to continue to ShuttleCloud Migration. Choose your old account. Gmail ShuttleCloud Migration will ask you for permission to access it. Click Allow, and close the window.
- Go to the first popup window and select the import options for your old account. You can import contacts, mail, and all new mail for the following 30 days from your old account to your new account.
- After the process is over, a message will appear. Click the Ok button, go to your new Gmail account, refresh the page, and that’s it! You can now see the emails from your old account in a folder with your old account’s name.
As you can see, the process is quite simple, just make sure that you transfer all the data you need and don’t miss anything important. Moreover, it wouldn’t be superfluous if you notify the people important to you about the changes. After that, you can even delete all your emails in the previous Gmail.
Read Also:
- How to send email to multiple recipients in Gmail
- How to create rules in Gmail
- How to schedule an email in Gmail
Why do people need more than one email address
In general, having one Gmail account (or any other domain) isn’t a good idea. At least because you should have a backup mail in case you just forget the password to your main one. Typically, mail services always ask for additional mail, so that in case of some stuff to send you a recovery code to a spare mailbox.
There’s another option when you need to create a working email because you’re unlikely to be happy when your personal mail will be clogged with work correspondence and questions. And also it especially concerns those cases when you need to link your account to some service or several, which obviously will spam you with ads, and in order to avoid this, it’s better to specify the mail, which you simply don’t use.
As in the first case, if you start your own business – is definitely worth allocating a separate mail for it. Yes, it’s almost like with your work email – you shouldn’t specify your personal email for your business at least because your email username should tell your audience what the email is about and be memorable (it can even repeat the name of your brand or product).
That’s it, you now know more about how to customize your Google Account and always have access to your data right at your fingertips.
