How to Change your Email on LinkedIn Quickly

If you have been on LinkedIn for a while, odds are that you have used an email address in the past that is no longer be active. The professional social network has been around for a while now, and most users signed up over five years ago. Having an old email address tied to your LinkedIn account limits functionality. You won’t receive any updates or notifications by email and therefore you will have to check LinkedIn for updates regularly.

Changing your email address on LinkedIn is relatively easy and requires less than a minute. It involves logging into your LinkedIn account and adjusting the settings to change the address permanently. We’ll dive into how you can do that below.

Quickly change your LinkedIn email address

Before you try to log in to change your LinkedIn email address, you want to make sure that:

• You have the correct old email address

• You know your password

• You correctly copied your new email address

• You have access to both inboxes

If any of these are missing, please refer to the additional information below. We will help you find all the information you need. We also provide other steps related to recovering your password. And we will explain what to do when you don’t know your email address or when you can’t access your old inbox. 

How to add a new email address to your LinkedIn account:

1. Go to linkedin.com

2. Click “Sign In” at the top of the page

3. Enter the email address you’re currently using on LinkedIn

4. Enter the password linked to this account

5. Click your profile picture in the top right corner

6. Select “Settings and privacy” from the dropdown menu

7. Click the account tab

8. Click “Login and security”

9. Look for “Email addresses” 

10. Click “Change”

11. Add a new email address

12. Click “Send verification”

13. Go to your new email address’ inbox

14. Open the new email by LinkedIn

15. Verify your email address by clicking the link provided

How to make your new LinkedIn address the primary one

After adding a new email address to your LinkedIn account, you can follow the following steps to set it as the primary address:

1. Return to the “Email address” section on LinkedIn

2. Look for your new email address

3. Click “Make primary”

Changing your LinkedIn email address without a password

If you have forgotten your password, you will not immediately be able to gain access to your LinkedIn account. The same will be true if your online password manager, like LastPass or DashLane, hasn’t stored the correct credentials. You will need to figure out what your LinkedIn password is before you can change your email address. In most cases, it’s easiest to ask LinkedIn to send you a link to change your password. It takes less than a minute to request a new password link and to change the password for your LinkedIn account.

By following these steps, you can change your LinkedIn password:

1. Go to LinkedIn.com

2. Click the “Sign in” button in the top right corner

3. Click “Forgot my password” in the main box

4. Enter the email address connected to your LinkedIn account

5. Go to your email inbox and check for a new email message from LinkedIn

6. Click the link in the email 

7. Create a new password for your LinkedIn account on the page that opens

Should you use your primary email address for LinkedIn?

Not everybody likes using their primary email address for LinkedIn. There are a few reasons why you shouldn’t add it. For example, LinkedIn will send you an email every time someone interacts with your profile. Every new connection request you get will result in a new email message. The same is true for private messages and many other forms of interaction with other users on the platform. If you are determined to keep your inbox uncluttered at all times, using your primary email address might not be the best way to keep your inbox empty. If you’ve enabled any automatic email notifications, LinkedIn will flood your email address with messages every day.

In case you do want to use your primary address, you should consider doing the following:

• Disabling all connection request emails

• Disabling all update emails

• Disabling all private message emails

You can disable any of these settings in LinkedIn’s notification settings. This takes less than a minute and will help you keep that inbox uncluttered. If you still want to be updated when you get a private message, you might want to consider enabling that setting. This will let you avoid missing messages during periods when you’re not actively using LinkedIn. Another workaround to stay updated while keeping your inbox clean is by installing LinkedIn’s mobile app. Just make sure that you disable specific notifications if you want to avoid having your phone buzzing all day because of the incoming messages or connection requests.

What if you don’t have access to your LinkedIn email address?

Sometimes, for various reasons, you can lose access to your email inbox. This could be the result of your email account getting hacked or because you forgot your password. You may run into some problems when you try to change your LinkedIn email address. Luckily, LinkedIn has a way of changing your email address even if you do not have access to your email’s inbox. It does, however, take some extra work to get your account reactivated.

Before you start that procedure, consider a better option, one that will save you a lot of time. You may have added a secondary email address to your account in the past. It’s always worth checking. This opens another method that will only take a few minutes of your time but up to a few business days for LinkedIn to verify the information that you provide. If you do have other email addresses tied to your LinkedIn account, it’s worth trying these with the “forgot your password” method outlined above, as it could save you a lot of trouble. You might also ask someone in your network to see if they can help find your email address. They’ll need to understand how to find someone’s email address on LinkedIn.

If you went through all your email addresses but still haven’t been able to gain access to your account, you will have to send LinkedIn the following information:

• Take a photo of your ID or driver’s license with your phone or webcam

• Provide the email address that is associated with your account

• Providing additional information such as previous passwords might be helpful

Go to this link to start the procedure. In case you run into difficulties, you might want to reach out to LinkedIn’s Support Email. 

When should I change my LinkedIn email address?

There are several cases in which you might want to change your email address on LinkedIn. It all comes down to security, keeping your information up-to-date, and avoiding any legal issues with past employers:

Things to do while changing your email address on LinkedIn 

Have you added a new LinkedIn email address to your account? If so, we recommend taking a few additional steps to get the most out of your LinkedIn profile. We are aware of how valuable a well-optimized profile is, but also believe you should avoid letting your inbox get filled with tons of LinkedIn notifications. We recommend taking the following steps to ensure that you are getting the most out of LinkedIn while keeping it unobtrusive.

Update your LinkedIn profile picture

Your LinkedIn profile picture is one of the most essential elements of your entire profile. LinkedIn is all about looking professional, so you might want to update your profile picture to a more recent photo. If you’ve been a LinkedIn user for years, odds are you haven’t changed much about your profile except for your job descriptions. Updating to a more recent profile photo will give your account a fresh feeling. It will also help you to stand out among the people that are already a part of your network. A new photo will make them look twice and can rekindle professional connections. Here are some guidelines you should pay attention to:

• Make sure the background of the profile picture is not too busy

• Make sure that your face is recognizable 

• Make sure your face isn’t blurry or pixelated

Update your LinkedIn cover photo

We’ve already touched on why you should pay extra attention to your LinkedIn cover photo. It’s a great way to increase people’s enthusiasm about your company and the products or services that you’re providing. A great LinkedIn cover photo contains:

• A high-quality picture

• Your brand name or logo

• A slogan or a temporary promotion

Your LinkedIn cover photo is a great platform for promotion. Because every person that visits your profile will also see your cover photo, it’s a very effective way to increase the traffic to your website. This traffic can also turn into leads, which might turn into customers down the road. LinkedIn can be a free and effective way to contribute to your efforts to create new business opportunities.

Update your profile description

LinkedIn provides a great way of giving people a quick summary of who you are and what you do. Your profile’s description can contain anything you want, which means that it’s perfect to use as a lead generator. You can add elements such as articles you’ve published in the past and also provide extra information about your company. A good proportion of visitors to your profile page will read your personal and company summaries. In the world of content, a catchy but above all conversion-focused profile summary will stand out and will create new business opportunities. 

Here are some ways to write a great profile description:

Check your recent messages

After changing your LinkedIn email address, you should check your old LinkedIn email account to see if you have any missed any messages. If you haven’t been very active on LinkedIn, you may have missed a few private messages from connections that want to contact you. These connections might even turn into leads and customers if you start engaging with them. Do not get discouraged when you see lots of messages in your inbox. Instead of replying to all of them at once, you should answer a few now and a few later. You can schedule some extra time in the week to answer some of the messages. This way, you can keep everybody in your network up-to-date and in contact.

Add your latest clients to your profile page

If you’re working with exciting new clients, such as corporates or other well-known companies within your market, it’s a good idea to add these to your LinkedIn profile. Just make sure that your clients are alright with this, as some might not appreciate having such info out in the open. You can contact your clients and ask for their permission to be added to your profile to avoid any issues. This is a very effective way of creating new opportunities for your company. Adding your clients’ logos or names can be accomplished in a few minutes. You can create a portfolio and add it as a document to your LinkedIn profile, or you can add the names of the clients or partners to your job description.

Add new people to your LinkedIn network

If you haven’t been very active on LinkedIn lately, it might be worthwhile to add some of the people you have spoken to recently. Then, you will pop up on their news feed every time you post a new update, which means they are updated on the progress of your company. This can generate new leads when you add new features to your products or expand your list of services. Or, if you post anything valuable on the platform, such as a new piece of content, they can like the content, and it will spread within their network as well. If you are aware of the best time to post on LinkedIn, your content could even go viral. Adding new people to your network and slowly expanding your network is an excellent way of growing your future customer base.

Sync your address book

The contacts that you’ve recently added to your Gmail or Outlook account can be synced with your LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn will match the email addresses in your address book with LinkedIn users. Unless they’ve recently changed their LinkedIn email address, they will show up as recommended connections in your account. This is a quick way of expanding your network as you can add dozens or even hundreds of accounts in a single click. Please note that LinkedIn has algorithms to identify people that might be abusing the platform to expand their network quickly. To avoid any problems, you might want to stick to adding just a few dozen people a day instead of adding hundreds of new connections at once. 

Add your new colleagues

Have you recently joined a new company? If so, you may want to change your LinkedIn email address to your new company email address. Once you’ve set up the new email address, you can add your new colleagues to your LinkedIn network. The easiest way to do so is by visiting your company’s LinkedIn page. Most of the other employees will be accessible from the company page, so you can visit their profiles and add your new colleagues with only a few clicks. If you’re working for a company with hundreds or thousands of employees, you don’t want to add all of them at once. Just add a few dozen a day to avoid LinkedIn confusing your activity on the platform with potential abuse. If they detect a high number of connections made per day, it might result in your LinkedIn profile being suspended for a while.

Ask for recommendations for your LinkedIn profile

You have most likely worked with dozens if not hundreds of people in the past. Let’s assume that most of these people highly enjoyed working with you. After changing your LinkedIn email address, you might want to polish your profile a bit by getting recommendations. Asking people you’ve worked with is a great way to get these recommendations. You can send a recommendation request through the platform. This way, members of your network can share their experience of working with you. 

Even if you’re not looking for a new job, it’s always beneficial to display recommendations on your LinkedIn profile. It will make you more attractive to companies that might want to hire you. Aside from that, it’s also helpful to have great recommendations if you’re in sales or if you’re the CEO or director of a company. Social proof is essential when it comes to working with people. When potential customers see that you have been working with people who are happy with their experience with you, they will be more likely to buy your products or services.

Here are some do’s and don’ts that you should take into consideration:

Write recommendations for your own LinkedIn connections

Just like having recommendations on your profile is important, it also makes you look good to have offered recommendations for others. Maybe one of your colleagues recently left their job and is looking for a new one. A recommendation can change how a potential employer perceives them. Or perhaps you had a great experience working with the CEO or CMO of a company in your customer base. A good recommendation can provide value for them in the future, so it’s worth investing a few minutes to make them look great and they will be grateful. It can open up new opportunities as visitors to their profile might click on your name and visit your profile. If you have a great LinkedIn profile, summary, and cover photo, they might even turn into customers. You can check our LinkedIn recommendation examples to learn how to write a great recommendation.

Update your skills

If you haven’t logged into LinkedIn for a while, your list of skills might be outdated. Maybe you’ve recently taken a course to learn more about a new marketing platform. If you’ve taken a course on creating a great LinkedIn marketing strategy, you might want to add the skill “LinkedIn marketing” to your profile. Your skills are an excellent way for profile visitors to see the experience you have in different aspects of your job. People might even specifically look for these skills and stumble upon your profile. This can lead to a new job in the future, or bring in new customers for the company you are currently working at.

Changing your LinkedIn email address is a great opportunity

The moment you log in to LinkedIn you have an excellent opportunity to go beyond just changing your email address. LinkedIn provides tons of ways to stand out among your professional peers. Though the platform has hundreds of millions of users, a great profile can still stand out. Most people don’t bother perfecting their profile, so an extra 30 minutes can profoundly impact your success rate on the platform. Don’t limit your visit to LinkedIn to only changing your email address but rather look at the other opportunities you have in improving your profile.