• Guides and help
• Tools, software and services
  • My IT Account
  • Files and storage
  • Software
  • Information systems
  • Equipment
  • Computer labs
  • Print, copy and scan
  • IT accessibility
  • Research computing
  • Unified communications and telephony
• Service status
• IT security
• IT training
• About us
• Contact us

Staff email address format

All staff are allocated an email address based on the form name@york.ac.uk. Associate staff may also opt in to have an address in this format.

Addresses may be re-issued in exceptional cases such as changes resulting from marriage or deed poll.

Please note that you should use your username (eg abc123) when logging in to York systems. An exception in Google Apps, where you log in with your email address.

Your email address

Your email address is based on your forename and surname. You can choose to register a preferred forename if you wish. Your new email address may also include your initials and, if necessary, a number at the end to make the address unique.

For example, John William Smith would be automatically allocated the first available address from the following ordered list:

• john.smith@york.ac.uk
• john.w.smith@york.ac.uk
• j.smith@york.ac.uk
• j.w.smith@york.ac.uk
• john.smith2@york.ac.uk
• john.smith3@york.ac.uk etc

If John William Smith has registered a preferred forename of “Bill” the system will instead allocate the first available format from the following list:

• bill.smith@york.ac.uk
• b.smith@york.ac.uk
• j.w.smith@york.ac.uk
• bill.smith2@york.ac.uk
• bill.smith3@york.ac.uk etc

Reusing email addresses

In order to maintain the overall benefit of addresses which are relatively easy to recall, and to minimise the need to generate addresses containing digits, it may be necessary for the University to reissue real-name based addresses once the current owners have left the organization.

Suitable safeguards will be established before such a process is invoked. For example, all email addresses are held for a minimum of 24 months before becoming available for reuse.

As addresses may be reissued, to avoid privacy problems we strongly recommend that you only use the new address for University work. In particular, registering for non-work related internet based services (eg Amazon, Facebook) using the new address may cause privacy issues as if the name is reused, the new owner of the address may be able to access the service.