To improve communications, the Church is consolidating the number of email addresses used by Church systems that communicate with members and leaders. The goal is to have only one email address for each individual. Headquarters systems that send communications to leaders will now use only the individual email address specified in the leader’s LDS Account.

A notice sent to LDS leaders August 30 asked leaders to set their preferred email address by signing in to LDSAccount.lds.org and selecting Contact Settings. (On this page, there is also an option to indicate who can see the address in stake and ward directories.) This email address will now be used by the stake and ward directory, Online Donations, FamilySearch.org, Church Directory of Organizations and Leaders, and other Church systems.

LDSmail.net Accounts

Previously, stakes were provided an email address consisting of the unit number @ldsmail.net. These email accounts will be discontinued at the end of 2016. Stake leaders who use these accounts should stop using them and specify a different email address at LDSAccount.lds.org.

If leaders have important email messages or contacts in those accounts, they should save them before those accounts are disabled at the end of 2016. There is no function in those accounts to automatically migrate information from the accounts. There is also no way to set up an automatic forward or reply if someone tries to send an email to those accounts. Therefore, leaders should inform others of their new email address. After the end of 2016, people who attempt to send email to an LDSmail.net address will be notified that the email account is not valid and the email message was not delivered.

Addresses in the Church Directory of Organizations and Leaders

When a stake president or bishop is called, an email address was collected and stored in the Church Directory of Organizations and Leaders system (cdol.lds.org). However, this email address was not automatically updated when the leader updated his email address in LDS Account, LDS Tools, or the Ward Directory. Therefore, the CDOL system will no longer store a separate email address for unit leaders. The email address in LDS Account will override any previous address listed in CDOL and any updates to the address in LDS Account will display on the CDOL screens (beginning in October). Note: This effects ward and stake leaders, but not mission presidents, General Authorities, or Church employees, whose ldschurch.org email addresses will still be stored and used in Church systems.

What if I want to use multiple addresses?

Some people have preferred to have Church headquarters contact them at one email address and ward and stake members to contact them at another address. Some people have entered one email address at FamilySearch.org and another at LDS Account. While this may be useful for some people, it can also be confusing because when they want to update their email address, they would have to remember all the systems they have used and update their address in multiple places. That is why the Church has chosen to have only one email address for each individual.

To help manage communications from various systems, many email programs provide ways to sort incoming messages and display them in a priority order or segregate them into separate tabs or folders within the inbox. You could use those options to sort mail from the Church. For example:

• Official letters and notices from the Church come from the email address OfficialCommunication@ldschurch.org. A bishop or stake president could set an option in his email program to flag those emails as important.
• If you subscribe to emails from FamilySearch, you could have your email program put emails from email@familysearch.ldschurch.org into a subfolder.
• If you subscribe to the “Inspiration and News” emails from the Church, sort email from communications@email.ldschurch.org into a folder.