Instructions, written especially for U-M e-mail users, are listed below. If you use an e-mail service provided by your department, school or college—rather than the e-mail service provided by Information and Technology Services (ITS)—you may need to contact your departmental administrator for additional or alternative instructions.
For instructions for setting up (configuring) your e-mail program to connect to the ITS IMAP e-mail service, see Configuring Your E-Mail Program to Connect to the ITS E-Mail Service (S4321).
ITS Exchange Service users should follow the instructions on the ITS Exchange Service website.
Web Mail
You can access your e-mail over the web with mail.umich.edu. See Using web.mail.umich.edu: Getting Started (S4297) for instructions.
Pine
See Getting Started With Pine E-Mail (S4131).
Mulberry
See Using Mulberry 3 for E-Mail (S4312).
You can use mail.umich.edu to access your ITS-provided e-mail. For instructions, see
See the ITS Exchange Service website for information about web access if you use that service for your mail.
You send, receive and read e-mail attachments differently, depending on the e-mail package you are using.
Below are links to instructions for handling attachments with the e-mail programs supported by ITS:
Never open unsolicited e-mail attachments unless you are sure they are okay. Many e-mail viruses spread through infected attachments.
A signature file contains text that automatically appears at the bottom of each e-mail message you compose. You create your signature file differently depending on which e-mail program you use. Select the program you use below for specific instructions.
If you use a different e-mail program, consult the online help or documentation for that program.
Create your e-mail group in the MCommunity Directory. Then you can use any e-mail program to send e-mail to all the members of your group by sending the mail to the group's address. See Managing Groups that You Own in the MCommunity Directory (S4382) for instructions.
You can request a listserv—a group maintained on a listserver machine. These are usually set so that only members of the listserv can send mail to the group. Groups created in the MCommunity Directory can be converted to listservs on request. See the ITS Listserver page for details.
Use the address book feature of your e-mail program to create an e-mail group that only you can use. See the documentation for your e-mail program for address book instructions.
ITS offers a free service, the class e-mail listserv, for faculty that creates e-mail groups using the student names in their class list.
If the person is affiliated with the University of Michigan, check the MCommunity Directory. Most members of the U-M community have their e-mail addresses registered there.
The best way to send e-mail to people registered in the directory is by sending it to uniqname@umich.edu, where you have substituted the person's uniqname for uniqname. For example, if Barbara Jensen's uniqname were bjensen, you could send e-mail to her at bjensen@umich.edu. By definition, uniqnames are unique, and there will be no confusion as to who the mail is intended for.
In general, you can send e-mail to anyone whose e-mail address is registered in the MCommunity Directory by addressing the mail to firstname.lastname@umich.edu, where you have substituted the person's real first name for firstname and the person's real last name for lastname. For example, if you wanted to send e-mail to someone named Barbara Jensen at U-M, you would send it to barbara.jensen@umich.edu. Use this method with caution; if there are two or more people in the directory with the same name, the message will be returned to the sender (with a list of the duplicate names). It sometimes helps to add the person's middle initial if you know it, such as barbara.j.jensen@umich.edu.
You can forward mail sent to you at your @umich.edu address to any e-mail address you choose. To set up or change your mail forwarding, follow these instructions.
U-M offers e-mail forwarding to all alumni, for as long as they choose, at no charge. This means you can keep your @umich.edu address and have mail sent to that address forwarded to any e-mail address you choose. E-mail forwarding is a service that uses the MCommunity Directory to re-route e-mail messages from your @umich.edu address to any e-mail address you choose. You'll need to enter your actual e-mail address in your directory profile. See Your Profile Settings (Mail Forwarding and More) section of the document, Managing Your Profile in the MCommunity Directory (S4380) for instructions.
Students will continue to receive the standard computing services as long as their department has them listed as Active in Program.
After that, they can continue their e-mail and other computing services provided by ITS by subscribing to U-M Online. U-M Online provides a software package including e-mail, Web, and other Internet software.
See the U-M Online Website for details.
Your e-mail quota is the amount of storage space you have in your mailbox for messages. ITS offers two e-mail services (IMAP e-mail and Exchange), and each has a different quota.
See also the question below, What happens if I go over my e-mail quota?
Nothing happens if you exceed your 2GB mail quota by a small amount from time to time. ITS does monitor mailbox size, however, and staff members work with users who go significantly over their quota to ensure that their needs are met without jeopardizing mail system performance.
In many cases, when a mailbox is significantly over quota, it is because of a problem with how a mail program is configured—perhaps multiple copies of deleted messages are being retained without the user's knowledge—and ITS then works with the user to resolve the problem.
To see how much mail storage space you are using, check the IMAP Status Page (log in required.)
ITS Exchange Service users receive a warning message when their Exchange account is within 10% of its size limit. Should you exceed your limit, you will still be able to receive messages, but you will not be able to send any until you remove enough messages to put your account below the limit. Exchange users can get additional space for a fee. (See also Exchange Quota Information.)
If you think your e-mail account is compromised, please see Compromised Accounts.
Full headers help you see the path a message took from its origination to your mailbox. If you forward a message to the User Advocate, Postmaster, or the Virus Busters, it is best to include full headers so these people have all the information they need to help you.
Instructions are provided on the U-M User Advocate website.
Mail list compilers often create lists by capturing the e-mail addresses of those who post to specific newsgroups or by capturing addresses from web pages. Sometimes it is impossible to get yourself deleted from such a list.
If all else fails, you can delete the unwanted mail without opening it. If your e-mail program supports filtering, you can let the program delete the messages automatically for you.
Here are some tips for getting out of groups in the MCommunity Directory and unsubscribing from listservs.
If the e-mail group you are is in the MCommunity Directory, you were either added to the group by the group owner or you joined the group yourself.
If the group owner added you, only the group owner can remove you from the group. Send an e-mail message requesting your removal to groupname-request@umich.edu, where you have replaced groupname with the actual name of the group. Be patient. It may take the group owner a couple of days to get to your message and remove you from the list.
Do not resort to sending a messsage to the entire group. You may receive more angry reply messages than you ever thought possible.
If you joined the group, you can remove yourself from it. See the instructions on joinable groups.
For more detail about getting out of directory groups, see Managing Your Membership in MCommunity Directory Groups (S4381).
You may have joined a group maintained by a Listserv, Majordomo, or some other program that manages e-mail lists with automated subscribe/unsubscribe services. When you sent a "subscribe" message, you probably received a message detailing how to unsubscribe. Because procedures can differ depending on the list, it's an excellent idea to file this information for later reference. Many e-mail lists also send out periodic reminder information about subscribing/unsubscribing. Many include this at the bottom of each message sent to the list members.
This happens when your e-mail address is put in the sender field of a message sent by someone (or something) else, and that message is rejected as undeliverable. In short, here is what happens:
Mail is sent that appears to be from you, but is not. (A virus might raid a victim's address book for addresses and find yours, or a spammer might use addresses harvested from websites or elsewhere, or a program randomly generating addresses might generate yours.)
The mail is delivered to an invalid address. Or the mail is delivered to a valid address but is rejected because it contains a virus.
The destination mail system returns the mail to the apparent sender (you).
There isn't much you can do about these rejections other than report the problem to the ISP where the mail actually originated. Sometimes you can determine this from looking at the full headers. If a virus rejection message's full headers indicate it originated at U-M, you can forward it to the U-M Virus Busters Team (virus.busters@umich.edu) for assistance.
For more information, see Forged E-Mail (from the IT User Advocate).
Set the Notice in Your Directory Profile
You can use the MCommunity Directory to alert people who send you e-mail that you are unable to respond. You do this by setting an away message in your individual profile.
With the away message set, the directory will generate an automatic response to anyone who sends you e-mail. You determine the content of that response, and can therefore let people know who to contact in your absence and when you will return.
Instructions
To set the away message, follow these instructions. Be sure to turn off your away message when you return.
Relax, You Won't Be Inviting Spam
The away message sent by the directory in response to mail sent to you is actually, at the machine level, a "bounce" rather than a "reply." This has the effect of de-confirming addresses that spammers use. So, you can use the away message secure in the knowledge that this will not generate additional spam by confirming an active e-mail address to spammers.
Report e-mail harassment, inappropriate use of e-mail, and other e-mail problems—for e-mail coming to your @umich.edu account, or originating from an @umich.edu account—to the Information Technology (IT) User Advocate by sending e-mail to abuse@umich.edu. For more information, see the IT User Advocate website.
Yes, ITS filters all mail that comes in through the U-M e-mail gateway machines for viruses. Outgoing mail is also checked for viruses. For details about how this works, see the E-Mail Virus Filtering at U-M page.
Note that other campus e-mail providers may do their own virus filtering.
Yes, even though U-M blocks viruses at the mail gateway, you still need antivirus software on your machine—and it needs to be configured for automatic updates.
Here's why:
Not all viruses spread through e-mail. You need to protect your machine from viruses that attack by other means.
When a new virus is discovered, there will be a delay between the virus discovery and the release of new filters. You increase your chances of protection during this time by having antivirus software on your machine.
If you use multiple e-mail accounts, you need to make sure you are protected from virus-infected mail sent to any of those accounts.
Better doubly safe than sorry.
See the Anti-Virus Protection at U-M page for information about downloading and installing antivirus software. U-M provides:
Microsoft Security Essentials or Microsoft Forefront Endpoint Protection for Windows
Sophos Anti-Virus for Macintosh
Yes, ITS backs up the mailboxes of its two e-mail services — IMAP, including the web-based mail.umich.edu, and Exchange — for disaster recovery. Daily back-ups are kept for one week.
Unused ITS IMAP mailboxes (that is, mailboxes that do not receive any mail) are removed after a period of time. If your mailbox has been deleted and you want to start using ITS mail, contact the ITS Service Center to have the mailbox recreated.
The ITS Service Center can answer your questions about e-mail.
To report e-mail that you suspect is in violation of the university's Proper Use Policy, send e-mail to the Information Technology (IT) User Advocate at itua@umich.edu. See the User Advocate website for more information.
These services are available to members of the University of Michigan community only.
See also
February 7, 2012
© 2012 The Regents of the University of Michigan
