Just in case someone might be intersested (fat chance!) I thought I would expose myself to what I just did.
Ike most here I bewail the passing of operamail, for all the reasons that have come up ranging from nostalgia to the pure hassle of changing. Plus the irritation of being forced to do something.
Becasue of a misunderstanding of how long I actually had to do something, I thought that all had to be sorted this month because I had downloaded part of the on-cloud email archive to see what arrived in my computer. Well, I don't know it that was actually correct but the result wwas that looked at “solutions” and came to the conclusion that I couldn't come to a conclusion and so started to look at what I had to do it the end of the moth was a real deadline.
Enter Panic, left, right and centre!
In the course of that I discovered that Fastmail actually make it rather easy to recover the basics (emails you want to keep, email addresses etc, although copying / resending / printing as {Dfs email is a genuine hassle. What was difficult was deciding who needed to be told what the new email would be, with the inevitable conclusion being that one transfer being enough, one would have to get it right first time if one left precipitously.
support@fastmail.com were very useful and pointed me towards a solution which has turned out to be very simple to achieve. It took me 5 to 10 minutes to set it up and more r than 10 I think. There are several domains to choose from.
My email address was xyz@operamail.com (not xyz of course but my 3 initials – a conceit I know, but why not!?)
I renamed my identity, changing the domain at the same time, to xyz@fastmail.co.uk), using a very natty facility in Fastmail, which, at the same time automatically added xyz@operamail as an alias meaning that this would be transparent to people wanting to send me emails, or replying to them). One can add a footer which advise on any new email address one might chose, including the renamed one.
I'm pleased with that choice, even though it is but step 1 of the process because:
o It takes the time pressure hassle away and I can chose the transfer date when I'm ready
o It thereby increases the time pressure of making a decision on what comes next
o I can prepare in parallel some of the transfer work
o I can spread the change announcement over a controlled period; first the top priority and second, because the incoming will still reach me as I would plan an overlap between loosing opera-mail and the new one becoming functional.
o In principle I won't have to move twice
o It uses the existing subscription
o I get to keep the front end of my ID
Al the a pretty obvious but added up I think it's a good choice.
One thing to come out of it so far ia that Fastmail is pretty good and finding a Mail client as good as that will be tricky. By now I'm comfortable using Fastmail and might stay there. The above process protects that as a choice, rather the leaving becoming a fait accomplit.
I looked at Google – clunky I would say
also at Outlook – also a bit clunky but in a more sophisticated way
Of course that may be lack of familiarity particularly with Outlook, but that's my impression so far.
I tried to look at Vivaldi Mail but having sort of registered my new ID it would not let me complete the process , so work in progress there.
I've not looked at Thunderbird
Well there we are, not for everyone perhaps, but not a bad staging post which eases one into the migration.