Related pages
The University's email service for all staff and students is provided by Google Workspace for Education.
Log in with your York email address and password.
Eligibility
All members of the University are automatically given a personal email account.
You'll automatically get an email account when you register your IT Services account:
Access your email using the Google Mail web page, or by installing the app for your phone or tablet:
If you're a student in a country where you are unable to access Gmail, you can set up email forwarding.
Your email account has unlimited storage space.
Changed your name?
Find out how to get a new email address:
A non-personal account can be requested to provide you with a separate email account.
For example:
You can also request up to 25 custom email addresses. This allows you to have email addresses that are descriptive and easy to remember.
Your non-personal account can be set up to send messages so they appear to come from the custom email address.
How to request
The owner of a non-personal account can request it be set up with email providing only they know the account's password. Other people can then be given delegated access. Contact the Library and IT Help Desk to request a new account, or an update to an existing account.
If you need a custom email address for your account, contact your Departmental Computing Officer, who will pass your request to the Library & IT Help Desk on your behalf.
Please allow three working days for these requests for new accounts or custom email addresses to be processed.
To change your preferences, click the gears icon at the top of any Google Mail page and select Settings.
General tab
Accounts tab
Labels and Filters tabs
Themes tab
Archiving lets you tidy up your inbox.
When you select to archive a message, it is moved from your inbox to the All Mail label.
Any message you've archived can be found by:
When someone responds to a message you've archived, the conversation will reappear in your inbox.
IT Services guide to spam
Google Mail automatically moves spam out of your inbox, applies the spam label and deletes it after 30 days.
You can see all spam messages by selecting the Spam label on the left pane. Check your spam folder regularly to make sure incorrectly labelled messages aren't lost.
If a spam message arrives in your inbox, select the message, then click the Spam button.
If a legitimate message is incorrectly labelled as spam, select the message and click the Not spam button.
If you find that some senders' messages are consistently being mislabelled as spam, you can prevent this by adding their email addresses to your Contacts list.
If you click your Spam label and open one of the messages, you'll see a message at the top with a brief explanation about why that particular message was placed in Spam. Use this information to protect yourself from potentially dangerous or fraudulent messages and to better understand why a message was or wasn't marked as spam.
Here are some of the explanations that you might see:
We receive on average 7.9 million emails per month on the University of York domain, that’s seven times as many emails as we send. We’ve distilled all of our advice into our top 10 tips for effective email usage:
We strongly recommend using the web interface to access Google Mail, as it allows you to make full use of all the features including full integration with Google Apps.
When you're on the move, use one of the apps available for phones and tablets:
If you're more familiar with Outlook, Google provide advice on moving to Google Mail, including a features comparison:
We also have instructions for anyone wishing to use Outlook, or other applications, but you should be aware that this will reduce functionality:
You may wish to move between multiple Gmail accounts. This could be because you're using a non-personal University account, or because you have a non-University Gmail account. Google's multiple account feature allows you to remain logged-in to multiple accounts, and switch between them quickly.
You are advised to use this feature with caution - for example, ensure that you check which account you are using before you send email. Many people set different themes so they can see at a glance which account they are using.
Note for Android users: When you set up a personal (not work-owned) Android phone or tablet that you intend to use with multiple accounts, it's important that you connect it to your personal Google account before you connect it to your University Google account. If you connect to the University account first, your Google Play account and other facilities will be linked to the University account, so you'll lose access to apps and other content if you leave the University.
Find out what happens to your email account when you leave:
Help from Google
Google's getting started tutorial provides a basic introduction to Mail's features.
Help from IT Services
If you're having problems using Google Mail, get in touch with the Library and IT Help Desk.
Problem | Solution |
---|---|
Missing features or strange behaviour when using the website |
Google Mail can be accessed from most web browsers, and is also available via Android and iOS apps. The Google Mail web interface is supported by the current and prior major releases of the Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari and Firefox desktop web browsers. Mobile web browsers must meet certain minimum requirements of functionality. Using Google's Chrome web browser gives the most complete and feature rich experience, including the ability to set up Google Mail Offline for when Internet connectivity isn't available. Further information can be found in Google's help pages on Supported Browsers. |
When I click someone's email address on a web page, Outlook opens. |
You need to set your web browser to open email links in Gmail. Chrome:
Firefox: Internet Explorer:
|
Legitimate mail is marked as spam. |
If you find a message wrongly classified as spam, select it, and click the Not Spam button. This will automatically move it to your inbox. If you find that some senders' messages are consistently being mislabeled as spam, you can prevent this by:
|
I sent a message to myself/to a mailing list, but I didn't receive a copy of it. |
If you send a message to a mailing list or CC it to yourself, you won't receive a copy in your inbox, but you will still be able to find it in your Sent Mail folder. |
I can't send an attachment as the file is too big. |
The maximum attachment size is 25MB. If your file is larger than this you can: |
I can't connect from China |
See: Data & security |
Service status | Live and supported service. |
---|---|
Hours of service | 24/7 |
Service support |
For help and support with this service, contact the Library and IT Help Desk. As part of the Google Apps for Education suite this service is entirely owned and managed by Google, who will monitor for, identify and fix all faults. |
Hours of support | Help from the Library & IT Help Desk is available 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday. |
Target availability |
General IT Services targets: Google Apps Service Level Agreement |
Service Level Agreement | |
Our performance |
Our service standards have been produced in consultation with our customers, and monitor the quality, timeliness and access to facilities and services: |
Complaints procedure |
If you wish to give us general feedback on this service, please see our Feedback page for ways to get in touch. If you wish to make a complaint, please see our complaints procedure. |
We expect you to:
We received on average 7.9 million emails per month on the University of York domain, that’s seven times as many emails as we send. It is estimated that people now spend one third of their time at the office - and half of the time they work at home - reading and answering emails. This presents a challenge for both academic and professional support staff; balancing workloads and responsiveness.
This guidance below will help you make effective use of email and manage your inbox, and increase awareness of following:
We’ve distilled all of our advice into our top 10 tips for effective email usage and we hope that these can be adopted across the organisation. This guidance and advice is focused on Gmail as it's our supported email service. We recommend that you use Gmail and if you choose to use an alternate email client you may not be able to use some of the features we’ve referenced.
1. Ask yourself if you really need to send this email
What are you trying to achieve by sending an email? If you’re looking for a quick response, a chat service, a phone call, or a physical conversation may work better. A group chat tool can be useful if you need to discuss something without creating a long and confusing email chain. If your email is a regular update to a group of people, then a blog or social media website may work better and enable recipients to engage more with your content.
2. Use smarter subject lines
Start with a subject line that clearly labels the topic, and maybe includes a status category eg [Info], [Action], [Time Sens] [Low Priority]. This makes it clear what you want people to do. Use [Urgent] and [Important] with caution - urgency and importance are subjective!
Gmail groups together email with the same subject in conversation threads. If the topic changes later, just change the subject accordingly. That way, you won’t have any unrelated messages linked together in your inbox.
3. Look at how your email is written
How long is your email? Where have you put the key messages or actions you want the other person to take in? Remember, people have a lot of emails to read and will skim them for the most important points. Get quickly to the point and use concise sentences and short paragraphs, putting anything particularly important separate from the rest of the text. Keep your email short, using links to external pages where necessary.
You can find further ideas for how to do this in this video on how to annoy people with email.
4. Share don’t send
When you attach a file to an email, you lose control over access to that file and how many versions there are - this is bad for security.
In your email you can include a link to a document in Google Drive rather than attaching it as a file. Using Drive rather than attachments to share documents allows for control over permissions even if the email is forwarded to other people. It also means there is only ever one document (with version history).
You can also add a document (eg an agenda) to an event in Google Calendar and use the ‘Share’ button to let people know you’d like to collaborate.
Find out more about document sharing and collaborative editing:
5. Think before you send
Always proofread your email. There are a couple of things you can do to avoid those unfortunate incidents where you’ve sent an email to the wrong person. Write your email first and add the recipients once you’re finished. You can configure Gmail’s Undo Send feature, which gives you up to 30 seconds to retrieve an email that you’ve just sent.
6. Understand when to use CC, BCC and Reply All
For every recipient you add, you are dramatically multiplying total response time. Be respectful of people’s time and think about whether they really need the information you are sending. When there are multiple recipients, please don't default to 'Reply All'. Maybe you only need to cc a couple of people on the original thread. Or none.
We recommend using BCC if you are emailing a group of staff who don’t know each other. And you should always use it if emailing a group of students or customers, so that you don’t share email addresses without a lawful basis for doing so. To be safe, ask a colleague to check that you have used BCC before you send an email to a large group of people.
7. Signed, sealed, delivered
Many people in our organisation work outside of core hours. Often people try to manage this by using a third-party email scheduler, but this may mask a problem with people working outside of office hours or transfer the issue of email traffic back to office hours. The University doesn’t have a contract in place with an email scheduler and free versions should not be used as they will have full access to your emails so would not be GDPR compliant.
We need to acknowledge that work life balance and wellbeing are based on individual personal preference and working out of core hours may suit different people's preferences and commitments. Acknowledging this and having realistic expectations on response times can address this issue.
You can use your email signature to explain that you don’t require a response straight away. We’d suggest something like:
I work flexibly - so while it suits me to email now, I do not expect a response or action outside of your own working hours.
8. Use the features of email to your advantage
You can manage your incoming mail using Gmail’s filters. This enables you to set up rules to attach a label, archive, delete, star, or automatically forward your emails.
Labels work like folders, except you can add multiple labels to a message.
You can delegate access to your account or to a non-personal account. This way you don’t share passwords and all staff have access to the email accounts they need.
Sort your emails into different inbox tabs or use the ‘priority inbox’ setting, where your emails are automatically split into three sections: important and unread, starred, and everything else. The G Suite Learning Centre provides useful advice to choose the right inbox setting for you.
Under your Advanced Settings in Gmail you can find a number of features you can turn on to help manage email to your advantage. These include a preview pane, canned responses (templates) and custom keyboard shortcuts.
Working within the Gmail client itself also means you can use the following Google products in the sidebar, in the same browser window so you don’t need to switch between tabs:
Calendar: Check your schedule and add or edit events.
Keep: Create a note or list.
Tasks: Add to-do items and deadlines.
9. Limit how often you check your email
If we all agreed to spend less time sending email, we'd all receive less email! Consider scheduling half-days at work where you can't go online. Or a commitment to email-free weekends.
10. Don’t handle an email more than once
‘Do, Delegate, Delete’ is a good practice to get into when working through your email. This ensures that you only ever handle each email once.
Rather than using your inbox as a running task list, move actions from emails to another system such as Google Tasks or Google Keep.
If you want to clean up your inbox without deleting your emails, you can archive or mute them. Your emails are moved to a label called "All Mail."
When you archive a message: The message will come back to your inbox when someone replies to it.
When you mute a message: Any replies stay out of your inbox. You can search for the conversation if you want to find it again.
When you delete a message it stays in your Trash for 30 days. After that time, it will be permanently deleted.