Americans are among the most mobile people in the world. In the course of a lifetime, an American may change residences at least two or three times. This results in a lot of lost friendships and broken relationships as people inevitably lose touch with each other. Fortunately, e-mail now makes it easier for people to stay in contact with each other. But what if you want to reconnect with an old friend or lover but you don't know their email address? What do you do now? Fortunately, there are ways to find someones email address.

First, you should try the most obvious sources – mutual friends and acquaintances. Try and get in touch with them and ask if they have the person's email. Or if you used to have this person's email but you lost it, try looking at your old emails to see if you still have some correspondence from that person that would contain an email address. You might also still have this person's calling card.

If the above methods don't work then broaden your search. If you went to college together, then you can try looking for a student directory on the college's site. Or if you know where the person works or used to work you can try searching that company's site. If the person you are trying to look up is a professional, there are also specialized email directories you can try that focus on certain classes of people.

You can also try getting in touch with this person through social networking sites he or she may have joined. The site won't give you the email address, but they will send your email to the person concerned if they are a member. If you want to find out if they are a member of a particular networking site, then you can use search engines that search these sites.

Third, you can try reverse email search sites. All you have to do is to type in that person's first and last name and the site will provide an email address provided that person is in their database. Or if you're willing to shell out some money you can subscribe to the site or pay a small fee so that you can get more information about the person other than their email address, such as what purchases they've made online and if they hold any professional licenses.

Finally, you can try searching for the person on search engines. This is something of a last resort since the search results are likely to give you lots of hits. If that happens then you can try limiting the search by including information like their middle name, where they were born and other relevant information in the search parameters. Or you can try using their name then appending common emails at the end.

If after using all of the above methods you still fail to find someones email address, then perhaps the person either has no email or simply does not want their address to be readily available. Remember that people have to register their email address with a public email directory before they can be found. Most Internet service providers do not register the emails addresses of their clients in public directories. So perhaps you should simply respect this person's privacy.