Overview

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:

• Students are given an email address with the format username@york.ac.uk.
• Staff are given an email address based on their name, normally in the format firstname.surname@york.ac.uk. See Staff email address format for details of staff email addresses.
• Associate staff can choose a name based email address when they register, if they wish.

Access your email using the Google Mail web page, or by installing the app for your phone or tablet:

• Mobile devices

Your email account has unlimited storage space.

Key features of Google Mail

• Conversation view - keeps the replies to a thread together in one message
• Labels - sort your email. Works like folders, only better
• Out of office reply
• Inbox views - set up your email to suit the way you work
• Message filters
• Delegating access - allow your PA to access your mail and send messages on your behalf
• Labs

Find out more about using these Google Mail features, and more, on our Google Apps site.

Non-personal accounts

A non-personal account can be requested to provide you with a separate email account.

For example:

• to keep messages separate from the owner's personal account
• to make it easier to hand over the role from one person to the next
• to enable several people to monitor and manage the email account

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 & 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.

Using Google Mail

• Account settings
• Spam
• Other ways to access your account
• Switching between multiple Gmail accounts

Account settings

To change your preferences, click the gears icon at the top of any Google Mail page and select Settings.

General tab

• Change your language preferences
• General display and navigation settings for your inbox
• Set your profile picture
• Set a signature
• Set an out of office autoreply

Accounts tab

• Custom 'From:' options

Labels and Filters tabs

• Manage labels and filters

Themes tab

• Customize the look and feel of Google Mail.

Archiving

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:

• clicking All Mail in the list of labels on the left side of your Google Mail page
• clicking on any other labels you've applied to it
• searching for it

When someone responds to a message you've archived, the conversation will reappear in your inbox.

Spam

IT Services guide to spam

• Spam and phishing email

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.

Why messages are marked as spam

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:

• Spam and suspicious emails

Other ways to access email

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:

• Mobile devices

If you're more familiar with Outlook, Google provide advice on moving to Google Mail, including a features comparison:

• Switching from Outlook

We also have instructions for anyone wishing to use Outlook, or other applications, but you should be aware that this will reduce functionality:

• Using Google Mail with other email software

Switching between multiple Gmail accounts

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.

• Click on your picture, displayed at the top right of the screen
• Select Add account
• Enter the email address and password for another account you wish to access and click Sign in.
• Once you've done this, you'll be able to move between the accounts by clicking on your picture, and selecting the account you wish to access from the drop-down menu.

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.

When you leave

Find out what happens to your email account when you leave:

• Students (includes details of "Email for Life")
• Staff

Help & troubleshooting

Help from Google

Google's getting started tutorial provides a basic introduction to Mail's features.

Help from IT Services

The IT Services Google Apps site includes hints, tips, video tutorials and details about our popular Google Knowledge Sharing events:

• IT Services Google Apps site

If you're having problems using Google Mail, get in touch with the Library & IT Help Desk.

Troubleshooting

Our commitments

Your responsibilities

We expect you to:

• use the email account and address provided to you for your University work
• ensure that only the email account's owner knows the password, and ensure non-personal account passwords are not shared
• let us know when an alias-based email address is no longer required
• be careful when typing in email addresses and using the autocomplete feature, to ensure you don't email the wrong person
• not send unsolicited mail in bulk to members of the University - this is regarded as abuse of the directory facility