Printer Friendly- What is my Exchange Account?
- What is my Official Email Address?
- How do I get to the login screen to read my messages?
- What is the Email Naming Standard for MS Exchange?
- What is my initial password?
- Any rules on my password?
- Why is my mailbox managed so tightly?
- Why am I getting warning messages from the System Administrator about my mailbox size?
- What happens if someone sends me a message when my mailbox is over the limit?
- What is my mailbox size?
- What is the limit on the size of each mail message?
- How do I manage my mailbox to avoid exceeding my quota?
- How can I check my quota?
- How long do messages stay in my Inbox?
- Can I use another email client like Outlook, Outlook Express, Netscape?
- What are the maintenance schedules for the mail servers?
- How do I get my contacts to show in both Outlook and Outlook Web Access (OWA)?
- In Outlook, how can I change the default view in the Global Address List so that I see Faculty/Staff?
- Can I download my email to my local PC via POP3?
- When I use the Out of Office Assistant, why do people only get one copy of my Out of Office message when they send me multiple messages?
- How can I add another mailbox to my folder list?
- What browsers are supported in Outlook Web Access 2003?
- What's the difference between Premium and Basic?
- In OWA, what is the difference between "Public or shared computer" and "Private computer"?
- Can I do a spell check in Outlook Web Access?
- How can a save a message to my Drafts folder so I don't lose it when I'm composing it?
- How do I change my password within Outlook Web Access?
- What browsers are supported by Outlook Web Access 2003?
- Can I set my "from" address in Outlook Web Access?
- How can I configure Outlook Web Access with a reading pane?
- How can I send to several Outlook Web Access contacts at the same time?
- In my OWA folder list, I see something called Public Folders. What are Public Folders?
- Can I add a signature to my OWA outbound email?
- What does the OWA Junk Mail filter do?
- How does Content Blocking work in OWA and why would I want to use it?
- How do I forward my Email to my non-university account (i.e. yahoo) in OWA?
- How do I set up the Out of Office Assistant in OWA?
- I'm using the Netscape browser and I'm having trouble changing my password within OWA.
- I just emptied my Deleted Items folder in OWA and I accidentally deleted something important. Can I get it back?
- In Outlook Web Access I only see 25 messages. Where are the rest of them?
- I'm using the Netscape browser and I'm having trouble logging in. It doesn't want to accept my password.
- I can only see a few messages in my Inbox, but there had been dozens when I last looked. Where did they go?
- When I try to send a message, I get a pop up: "You have exceeded the storage limit on your mailbox. Delete some mail from your mailbox or contact your system administrator to adjust your storage limit." What can I do?
- Outlook Web Access keeps asking me for an Office CD. I'm getting the message "Please wait while Windows configures Microsoft Office 2000." What is going on?
If your question is not answered here, please call the Help Desk at extension 4357. (978-934-HELP)
Exchange Account Information
What is my Exchange Account?
Your Microsoft Exchange account is your email account. Your email account exists on a central Microsoft Exchange server and stores all your email messages (unless you download your messages to your local machine via POP3). This server is regularly backed up and access to your account is only permitted once a password has been correctly verified, making it a secure environment for communication.
What is my official Email Address?
Your official UMass Lowell Email address is AuthID@uml.edu where AuthID is your FirstName_LastName. Your FirstName and LastName is obtained from the official HR database via a data transfer. If you do not like your official email address, you must change your name in the HR database. For students, your official Email address is FirstName_LastName@student.uml.edu. Your first and last name originate from your ISIS registration records.
In the case of duplicate names, a number is added to the address to ensure that you each have a unique email address. For example, in if there were two John Smiths' one would be John_Smith@uml.edu and the other would be John_Smith1@uml.edu. For students, it would be John_Smith@student.uml.edu and John_Smith1@student.uml.edu.
Your login account name in Outlook Web Access (OWA) and any email client is your FULL email address (i.e. John_Smith@uml.edu for faculty and staff). For students, it will be John_Smith@student.uml.edu.
How to I read my Email from the web?
Open your browser and enter the following: https://exchange.uml.edu
For students, open your browser and enter the following: https://webmail.student.uml.edu
You have access to your messages, calendars, tasks, and Global Access Lists from anywhere on the internet.).
What is my initial password?
For students, your initial password is your ISIS User ID (e.g. UMS12345678). Faculty and staff should use their ISIS ID omitting the UMS for their initial password. You will find this eight digit number on your ID card. Once you have successfully logged in for the first time, it is recommended you change your password by logging into Outlook Web Access and clicking on "Options".
- Your password must be at least 8 characters
- You may not use your last two passwords.
- You will be required to change your password after 120 days.
- If you change your password, you must wait two days to change it again.
- The system will allow you five failed login attempt before it locks you out. When this happens, you must wait 15 minutes before logging in again.
Browser-related Questions
What browsers are supported in Outlook Web Access 2003?
Internet Explorer 5.5 or later (IE 6.0 recommended), Netscape, Mozilla, Firefox, Opera.
To get the full benefits and features of OWA, use Internet Explorer 6.0, which gives you the Premium client. Other browsers (Netscape, Mozilla, Firefox, Opera) give you only the Basic client.
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What is the difference between the Premium and Basic client?
The premium client provides all Outlook Web Access features. The basic client provides fewer features than the premium client but offers faster performance. Use basic if you are on a slow dialup connection. The basic client will not allow you to forward your email to a non-UMass Lowell account.
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In OWA, what is the difference between "Public or shared computer" and "Private computer"?
OWA has improved security for the logon page. This security measure is especially useful for those who share a computer or those who access their email from a public computer in a lab or the libraries.
Your OWA session automatically logs you off after a certain amount of time. When you logon, you specify what kind of computer you are using. If you select "Private Computer", your session will timeout after 24 hours. If you select "Public or shared computer" your session will be closed after 30 minutes. After your session closes, even if you leave your browser open and someone tries to use it, they won't be able to access your account.
If you are accessing your email in your office, dorm room, home, or another private setting, it's recommended you use the Private setting.
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How can I save a message to my Drafts folder so I don't lose it when I'm composing it?
To save a message to your Drafts folder, click on the Save button on the OWA tool bar. This is typically next to the Send button.
It is important to periodically save your message as you are composing it if you plan to be inactive for periods of time. If you do not save your message, you may lose it if your session times out due to inactivity.
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What is the maintenance schedule for the email servers?
The email servers will restarted every 2nd and 4th Wednesday of the month at 6:00a to apply updates and patches. During this time, email service may be interrupted from 6:00a thru 7:00a. Unless there is a critical update released from Microsoft, this schedule will be maintained.
Exchange Mailbox Management/Quotas
Why is my mailbox managed so tightly?
The Exchange Server stores all of your data (messages, attachments, appointments, contacts, etc.) on the server until you explicitly remove it. Because of this, you must take certain precautions to ensure you do not run out of space on the server.
Why am I getting warning messages from the System Administrator about my mailbox size?
All mailboxes on the Exchange 2003 servers are configured with mailbox limits. Student mailbox limits are set to 100 MB; Faculty and Staff at 500 MB.
For students, you will receive a daily warning message from the postmaster if you are using more than 85 MB of your allotted mailbox size. You will be unable to send new messages if you are over 100 MB. You will be unable to send and receive messages if you have exceeded your mailbox limit.
For faculty and staff, you will receive a daily warning message from the postmaster if you are using more than 400 MB of your allotted mailbox size. You will be unable to send new messages if you are over 500 MB. You will be unable to send and receive messages if you have exceeded your mailbox limit.
Note: Messages in your "Deleted Items", "Drafts" and "Sent Items" folders count towards your mailbox quota so be sure to empty these folders when you get close to your mailbox limit.
What happens if someone sends me a message when my mailbox is over the limit?
If someone sends you a message when your mailbox is over your limit, the message will be immediately returned to them with a notification that your mailbox is currently not accepting new messages. Once your mailbox size has dropped below your limit you will be able to receive new messages.
What is my mailbox size limit?
Student mailbox quotas are set at 100 MB. Faculty and Staff mailbox quotas are set at 500 MB.
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What is the limit on the size of each message?
Messages students receive from the Internet and sent to users must not exceed 10 MB. Messages faculty/staff receive from the Internet and sent to users external to the UMass Lowell network must not exceed 10 MB. Messages faculty/staff send to UMass Lowell faculty/staff must not exceed 20 MB. Messages faculty/staff receive from UMass Lowell students must not exceed 10 MB. This includes all attachments and the message body.
For sending messages with attachments larger than 10 MB, faculty and staff are encouraged to use the secure dropbox service (http://dropbox.uml.edu).
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How can I check my mailbox quota?
For students, click HERE. You must enter your full email address as the user name.
For faculty and staff, click HERE. You must enter your full email address as the user name.Note:In all cases, you will be required to login using your full email address. (FirstName_LastName@student.uml.edu for students, and FirstName_LastName@uml.edu for faculty/staff).
Your password is the same email password you would use for Outlook Web Access (OWA).
If you are using the full Outlook Email client, go to "Tools" on your Outlook toolbar, then click on "Mailbox Cleanup...", then choose "View Mailbox Size..."
How long do messages stay in my Inbox?
For students only, messages stay in the Inbox for 120 days before they are purged. If messages are needed beyond 120 days, you will need to move them to a different folder.
For faculty and staff, messages remain in the Inbox indefinitely until they are manually deleted or moved to a different folder.
General Email Features
Can I do a spell check in Outlook Web Access?
OWA offers spell check functionality if you are running Internet Explorer on your Windows workstation. To enable spell check on all outbound messages, navigate to the Options screen and select Always check spelling before sending. Then click Save and Close to commit the new configuration.
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How do I change my password in Outlook Web Access?
Click Options, and scroll down to the "Change Password" and click to open.
Enter your full Account Name: (for example, Joseph_Smith@uml.edu). Enter your old and new password, then confirm your new password. Remember, the system remembers your last two passwords so your third password will have to be unique.
Can I set my "from" address in Outlook Web Access?
The from address in Outlook Web Access is automatically configured to be your proper legal name as provided by the Registrar/Human Resources and cannot be changed at this time. The "from" SMTP address is set to be your official UMass Lowell email address, Firstname_Lastname@uml.edu.
How can I configure OWA with a Reading Pane?
The new version of OWA offers several Reading Pane options. From the OWA toolbar at the top of the screen, select the drop-down arrow next to the icon and select if you want the reading pane to be to the right, on the bottom, or turned off.
You can also tell OWA how to treat messages in the reading pane by configuring options in the Options screen. Navigate to the Reading Pane Options area, configure your preferences and Save and Close your configuration changes.
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How can I change my default view in the GAL so that I see only Faculty & Staff?
The GAL is the list of names, resources and groups you can browse when you click the To. . . button in an email (this opens the Select Names dialog box). To narrow the search to a certain group, Faculty and Staff, for example:
- In Outlook's menu bar, click Tools -> Address Book
- In the Address Book's menu bar click Tools -> Options
- The Addressing dialog opens and the first option says, "Show this address list first"
- Select Faculty and Staff from the drop down list and click OK and close the Address Book.
The next time you click To. . . names from the Faculty-Staff list will be displayed. Note that you can choose to display the rest of the list at any time from within the Select Names dialog.
How can I send to several Outlook Web Access contacts at the same time?
To send to multiple contacts entries at the same time, enter their names on the "To" line of your message, separated by a semicolon: (;) Before sending your message, click on the "Check Names" button
In my OWA folder list, I see something called Public Folders. What are Public Folders?
Public Folders are shared mail folders that reside on the Exchange server. If you can see public folders then your account has appropriate permissions to view public folder hierarchy, but you may not have permissions to read the messages stored in the public folder. Several University departments or student organizations maintain public folders to provide shared access to mail messages. If you see a public folder that you'd like to have access to, please contact that department to learn whether your account can be assigned appropriate permissions.
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Can I add a signature to my outbound email?
OWA allows you to add a standard signature to all outbound email. Go to the Options screen and navigate to the Messaging Options section. Click Edit Signature to create or update your signature. Once you've created your signature, click Save and Close to save your signature in OWA.
If you want your signature to appear at the end of all your outgoing OWA messages, select "Automatically include my signature on outgoing messages," then save and close the Options screen.
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What does the OWA Junk Mail filter do?
OWA Junk Mail is enabled in the Options screen. You can use this preconfigured Junk Mail filter to help in the fight against spam. The filter will put suspected junk mail in the Junk E-Mail folder in OWA. You can also configure "safe senders" and "blocked senders" to customize your junk mail filtering rules.
How does Content Blocking work and why would I want to use it?
Another new feature of OWA 2003 is Content Blocking. By default, OWA will block any external content in HTML messages, such as pictures or sounds, linked within the message. These links are hidden references (not the underlined kind that you click to activate) in the HTML source code to an external location on the Internet, such as a Web site. They are triggered when the message is opened or previewed, which prompts a download of the external content.
While some legitimate senders do this to avoid sending large messages, junk email senders use this technique to verify your email address as a legitimate one. Once verified, you will be targeted directly with more spam. For this reason, make sure that Content Blocking is on. This setting can be confirmed in the Privacy and Junk E-mail Prevention section from the Options folder.
How do I forward my email to my non-university account (i.e. Yahoo, MSN)
The University assumes no responsibility for email that is forwarded to a non-university account. ITS highly recommends that users use their UMass Lowell email account to view campus-related messages and to communicate with faculty, staff, and students.
Warning: ITS can not recover lost email or support any problems that may occur after forwarding. It is possible that some users may lose important email messages due to forwarding. Some reasons could be: full mailboxes, invalid email addresses, attachment blocking, and spam filters which block good email messages.
Steps:
- Click Rules and click New
- Enter a name for your rule (optional)
- At the bottom, select the option to Forward it to then type the email address your want your email forwarded to. Please make sure it is a valid email address.
- Hit the Save and Close button
Note Rules are not available from non-Internet Explorer browsers (Netscape, Mozilla, Firefox).
When you "forward" your email to an external account, the forwarded message will arrive with "you" as the sender. For this reason, care should be taken when replying to the message.
Can I use other Email Clients and protocols
(Outlook, Outlook Express and Netscape clients; POP3 and IMAP4 protocols)?
You can access your email using any email client that supports secure POP3 and secure IMAP4.
Faculty and staff may use MAPI, POP3 and IMAP4 on campus and POP3 and IMAP4 off campus.
Out of Office Assistant
How do I set up the Out of Office Assistant in Outlook Web Access?
- Log on to OWA and navigate to the Options page.
- Enter your "Out of the Office" text and select that you are "out of the office."
- Finally, save and close these changes. This setting will send one message to each person who mails you while the Out of Office Assistant is enabled.
When you return, remember to change this setting and configure your email client to be "in the office."
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Why do people only get one copy of my Out of Office message when they send me multiple messages?
This is by design. The Out of Office Assistant replies to each sender exactly one time. This one-reply functionality is to safeguard against looping Out of Office messages between two mailboxes with the feature enabled.
Troubleshooting
I'm using Netscape browser and I'm having trouble logging in. It doesn't want to accept my password.
When logging in, you must type in your entire email address (John_Smith@uml.edu) in the User Name field. Enter your valid password and it will immediately prompt you to change your password. In the dialog box, leave the domain name blank and enter your entire email address in the user name field, followed by your new password.
I'm using the Netscape browser and I'm having trouble changing my password within OWA.
When the dialog box opens, leave the domain blank and enter your full email address in the User Name field (John_Smith@uml.edu). Alternatively, enter "student" in the domain, and enter John_Smith as the User Name. Enter your new password.
I just emptied my Deleted Items folder in OWA and I accidentally deleted something important. Can I get it back?
After you "Empty Deleted Items" from Outlook Web Access, those "emptied" messages go into a waiting area for 7 days before they are permanently purged from our systems. During that 7-day period, you can retrieve messages from the waiting area. Go to the Options screen and scroll down to the bottom to the Recover Deleted Items section. Click on the View Items button, select the messages you wish to un-delete and click on the Recover button. The message will be recovered into your Deleted Items folder.
In Outlook Web Access I only see 25 messages. Where are the rest of them?
By default, OWA displays 25 messages in the browser windows. You can configure this value to display up to 100 messages. Go to the Options screen and looking the Messaging Options section. Change the Number of items to display per page value, then click the Save and Close button.
I can only see a few messages in my Inbox, but there had been dozens when I last looked. Where did they go?
There are several view options for a mail folder. One option is to view only unread messages. Check the View options to see if you are only looking at unread messages, or some other subset.
When I try to send a message, I get a pop up: "You have exceeded the storage limit on your mailbox. Delete some mail from your mailbox or contact your system administrator to adjust your storage limit." What can I do?
You will receive this message if you try to send a message when you are over your mailbox limit. Clean out your mailbox of unwanted mail, including messages in the Sent Items folder, then Empty Deleted Items. At this time we will not be able to change storage limits on any Exchange mailboxes.
Note: Messages in your "Deleted Items", "Drafts" and "Sent Items" folders count towards your mailbox quota so be sure to empty these folders when you get close to your mailbox limit.
For detailed information on managing your mail
Outlook Web Access keeps asking me for an Office CD. I'm getting the message "Please wait while Windows configures Microsoft Office 2000." What is going on?
Outlook Web Access interacts with an Office component called "Office 2000 HTML Source Edit" when replying or sending new messages. If your machine is affected by this error you can safely ignore it or install the "Office 2000 HTML Source Edit" component from your Microsoft Office CD to the machine to stop the errors from happening. See THIS DOCUMENT for more information