How to change of email address in account options when address rejected?

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  brianhowden · Member · Jan 20, 2014 at 3:11 pm

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  I need to change my GMail email address in Account Options as I am switching to WordPress.org and a new host. According to your instructions on how to ‘Transfer a Domain to another registrar’ I must: “Please make sure that this email address is not used in your WordPress.com user account or the administrative contact on your domain. If it is, we may not be able to contact you when the email address stops working during the transfer, and the transfer will fail.” I have put my Hotmail address in the box, but when saving the change I get an error message to say : “that email address is already being used”. Since I don’t have any other non GMail address, I don’t know how to proceed. Please advise.

  The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

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  eurello · Staff · Jan 20, 2014 at 7:40 pm

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  Hi there –

  What’s the hotmail address you’re entering? It will appear as redacted in the public forums, but I’ll be able to see it and I can check to see if there’s another account with that email.

  Can you use your actual gmail address? The important thing is just not to use the email on your domain, so not the @domain.com email.

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  brianhowden · Member · Jan 20, 2014 at 10:10 pm

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  Hi Eurello – thanks for your response.
  The address I’m trying to change to is (email visible only to moderators and staff)

  Since my post I’ve been searching where the hotmail address might be used, and spotted that my WP.comNEWS subscription went to the hotmail address and so I tried to change that but in the end I had to unsubscribe and I also removed it from the blogs I follow subscription. But I still get the same message that the hotmail is being used elsewhere.
  That’s my only non Gmail address.
  My Gmail addresses are working, but of course I will need to transfer them with the domain.

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  eurello · Staff · Jan 20, 2014 at 10:29 pm

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  Hi there – You have a second account with that hotmail address, bahowden. It looks like it has an empty blog attached to it. If you can log into that account and reply here, I can just change that email address to something invalid, so you can use it for this account. However, note that doing that means you’ll never be able to use that username or .wordpress.com URL again.

  Another option would be to just set up an additional free gmail account and use that address.

  Although I think you really only need to change the admin email within the domain manager to be able to get the transfer email:
  http://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/domain-management/#update-contact-information

  And that one need not be unique, you should be able to use your hotmail there. You might just give that a try first, before changing your wp.com email address.

  Just be sure not to change the Organization field for the registrant contact, or update the First name and Last name fields for the registrant contact in the Domain Manager, that will lock your domain.