[peatmoss]

Yes, I’d forward emails until you can get everyone trained over to using your new email address. I’ve done that in the past with mostly inactive emails that I got through professional or academic associations. Presumably Gmail still makes auto-forwarding reasonably easy.

[distances]

Why not just leave the forwarding on? I still have my first e-mail address from the 90s forwarding all incoming mail to my current one, though it's very rare by now that anything comes.

[peatmoss]

You could! The only reason not to is if you wanted to close the account for some reason.