12 Ways to Find an Email Address

Email is a great tool. It’s fast. It’s easier than snail mail (typing a letter, printing it, finding an envelope, finding a stamp, and so on). You can send someone documents without killing a bunch of trees. But email is useless if you don’t have an email address for the person you want to contact. There is no single place called ‘directory assistance’ for email. But there are ways to find an email address. Some may be harder than others. But it’s not impossible. Here are 12 ways.

1. Check Your Contact List

Sounds dumb, huh? But more than once I’ve spent time tracking down an email address only to find the person was already in my contact list. I blame it on never getting rid of contacts – which is probably why I now have 1323 contacts in my main list. So, double check before turning to one of the other ways listed here.

2. Check Old Emails

If you think you may have emailed this person (or received an email from them) in the past, the address may be sitting somewhere on your computer. Of course, with the price of hard drives being so low and new computers coming with oodles of gigabytes, you may be keeping emails back to the beginning of time. If you use the free program Xobni (see our review), you’ll have the address in a few seconds. Type the name and you’ll have it in a few seconds. Xobni even consolidates the different email addresses an individual may have used so you can see all of that person’s addresses. If you use Vista (and haven’t turned search off) or have installed Microsoft Search 4.0 for Windows XP, it may take a little longer.

You may need to try different search strategies if you don’t find an address using the person’s name.

• Search for just the domain (the part after @).
• Search for just a first name or just a last name.
• Search for keywords or phrases you associate with the person.

3. Do You Have the Person’s Business Card?

If so, maybe there’s an email address on it. Even if the card is for someone else at the same company, you can probably conjure up your recipient’s address. If the address on your card is jdoe@company.com and you want to send an email to Mary Smith, her address is probably msmith@company.com.

4. Call the person

It’s hardly high tech, but if you have a phone number, the next fastest and easiest way to get an email address is to pick up the phone and call the person. And if you don’t have a phone number to call? Finding a phone number is almost always easier than finding an email address.

If you leave a voice mail, don’t waste the other person’s time (or yours) playing phone tag. Explain you would like to get their email address (and, if you don’t know them well, why – tell them what you want to send). In your message ask the person to send you an email. Tell them they don’t need to put anything in the email. When you get the email, you have their email address. (Then add it to that every growing contact list.) If you get an assistant or receptionist, ask them for the address – they probably have it. Or check with someone else who works for the business or organization. They can usually look it up much faster than you’re going to be able to find it.

5. Guess

If the person is with a business or organization, you may be able to guess their email address. Companies don’t, as a rule, assign email addresses randomly. If you know someone else in the same company and have their email, follow the pattern. Here are some of the common patterns. Capitalization is rarely important.

• firstname.lastname@domain.com
• firstname_lastname@domain.com
• firstnamelastname@domain.com
• firstinitiallastname@domain.com
• firstinitial_lastname@domain.com
• lastname@domain.com
• lastnamefirstinitial@domain.com
• firstnamelastnameinitial@domain.com

If you don’t know anyone’s address in the organization, you can still make an intelligent guess using those patterns. Rather than sending a half dozen emails hoping you’ll hit on the right one, check a website (like Verify Email Address) that lets you check to see if an email address works. If the address is invalid, you’ll see this:

You can stop when you see ‘Result: Bad’. The rest – especially what you see after ‘Log:’ gives the details. Of course, just because an email address is good doesn’t mean that (1) the person is checking their email or (2) that johnnie789 is the person you want to connect with.

What if you have an old personal email but seem to remember the person switched to Gmail or Hotmail or whatever? People often try to keep their old username when they switch to a new email provider. You may be able to guess the new address by looking at the old one. For example, if the old one is johnnie789@hotmail.com, you may want to check johnnie789@gmail.com. The same thought applies if you know their instant messenger username.


6. Do an Internet Search

Google the person’s name. You’ll be amazed how often you’ll find something. Or Google someone else at the same company or organization to find the pattern the company uses. Check other primary search engines like Yahoo and Microsoft’s new Bing.

Pipl is a website that uses what they call the “deep web” to find information about a person that traditional search engines might not find. I’ve had lots of luck using it. Just be aware that the first results you’ll see are always ’sponsored.’ Those will often include an email address. But unlike sponsors for sports events, ’sponsored’ here doesn’t mean someone else is paying. It means you pay.

Scroll down the page until you get past the sponsored results and you may just find an email address – without having to pay for it.

But if you keep scrolling down the results, you may find the email address – without paying for it.

There are some websites you can easily skip if you’re looking for email addresses. They may tell you the person has an email address, but they send you to commercial companies that will charge you. For example, ZabaSearch is great in finding an address, but if you click on ‘Check for Email Address’ you’re off to Intellius – which will try to charge you $4.95. Of course, if you can’t find the address otherwise and want to drop five bucks…

7. Social Networking Sites

More and more people are becoming a part of social networks. You can often get an email address on these sites. Unless you’re already part of the network and the other person has given you access to their information, it’s probably easier (and much faster) to pick up the phone and ask for the email address.

• Classmates
• Facebook
• Friendster
• icq
• LinkedIn
• myChurch
• Plaxo
• shelfari

8. Check Online Directories

There are a few online directories. My experience with them is spotty at best.

• Bigfoot
• PeekYou
• Wink People Search
• Yahoo People Search

9. Email Change-of-Address Services

You’ve probably changed your email several times. If you try to find your own email using some of the techniques outlined in this article, you may well find email addresses you have forgotten about.

Because you’re not alone, it was obvious that people would eventually begin creating websites that let you point people to a new email. And that’s also the weakness of these sites. If you find something useful, it’s because the person you’re looking for went to the site and posted their old and new email.

Emailchange.com is the easiest to use and lets you search without registration. It’s been around since 1996 and was the first site of its kind. ContactClean is another site. I was surprised when I searched for an old address to see this message:

I don’t know about you, but when I first read that – especially the second line of the circled text, I got the impression that wbristow@northwest.com wanted to check out people before releasing the new address. But as I looked more closely, it’s obvious that’s not necessarily true. I thought I’d check to see what happens. After going through several steps, they said they were sending a confirmation email. Unfortunately, it never came.

The other site I found, FreshAddress makes you register before you can even search.

If you’re aware of other similar websites, please post a comment to let others know.

10. Internet Groups and Usenet

There websites that sponsor ‘discussion’ and ‘interest’ groups of every type. Sometimes you can hit pay dirt searching them for a person. Because many of the search results you’ll get are from postings made years ago, go into this search realizing you may end up with old email addresses.

• Google Groups
• Yahoo Groups
• Usenet Newsgroups

11. Try Soc.Net-People

You may want to try the soc.net-people UseNet site. This is an Internet ‘bulletin board’ created specifically to help people find other people. Think of it as an informal lost person detective service. For help in how to use soc.net-people, check here.

12. Create a Website and Hope for the Best

This another long shot. Create a website that says you’re looking for someone. Google, for example, let’s you do it at no cost. Here’s an example set up to look for a certain John Doe. When you set up your site, try to include the person’s name in the site name and description. And be sure you share it with everyone.

Then create a page, again including the person’s name in the name of the page. Using the person’s name in the name of the website and in page names increases the chances that if the person you’re looking for searches for his or her own name, they’ll see your website.

Create a page that says you’re looking for someone’s email address. Explain why. Make sure you use the person’s name several times. Be sure you include an email address where people can reach you. But make sure you don’t just type your email unless you want to give that email to every spammer in the world. There are several ways to keep your email away from spammers. Do a Google search to find other ways to hide email addresses. I’m partial to the email obfuscator approach but it doesn’t work with Google sites.

Conclusion

Do you use other ways to find someone’s email address? Share them by posting a comment. Or email me.

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