Outlook Support

Outlook 2007 client

Getting Started

Note: We strongly suggest reading this section completely before using the Exchange email system.

Your Email Address

With Exchange your email address will change. You will still be able to receive email using your old address indefinitely. When you send email it will go out from your new address.

In GroupWise your email address was xxxxxxxx@pi.cpmc.columbia.edu (where xxxxxxxx is eight letters starting with your last name and continuing to your first if your last name is less than eight letters long).

In Exchange your email address will be xxxxxxxx@nyspi.columbia.edu . The only part of your email address that will change is the part after the ‘@’ sign. The first part will be the same as it was in GroupWise. In addition to your regular address, we are now offering firstname.lastname@nyspi.columbia.edu as an alias.

As mentioned above, you will be able to receive email on both the old address and the new one. It’s still a good idea to let your contacts know about your new email address so that they receive and send to the same address. An effective way of doing this is to add the information to your signature with a line saying, “Please note that my email address has changed, my new address is xxxxxxxx@nyspi.columbia.edu”.

Your Messages, Calendar, and Contacts

All your email, calendar entries, and contacts (including the central directory, those added by you, and distribution lists) will be transferred to your Exchange Account.

Password

Before your migration you will receive an email with your temporary password for Exchange. This password will need to be changed the first time you log in to OWA at http://piweb.nyspi.columbia.edu or https://piowa.nyspi.columbia.edu/. We strongly encourage you to use passwords that are at least 8 characters in length and include numbers and symbols. We also advise you not to share your password with anyone.

Accessing Email

In GroupWise the primary way you usually accessed your messages was through the GroupWise client installed on your computer. There was also the option of using the GroupWise Web Access.

With Exchange the primary way you will access your email will be through a web browser (similar to gmail and other popular email providers). The web access for Exchange is called Outlook Web App or OWA for short. OWA has all the features and stability you expect from your email system and it will be the primary access method both on and off campus. OWA will work with any operating system and any browser. So if, for example, you’re using a PC with Internet Explorer or a Mac with Firefox you will have the same experience.

The link to access your email is:

http://support.nyspi.org/email.html

Bookmarking this page or making it your home page will allow for easy access.

In specific instances we will support the use of Outlook 2007 or higher. We are aware that there are many email and scheduling applications that can work with Exchange and while we will provide you with as much information as we can to help you with these configurations we can only provide support for OWA, Outlook 2007, and Outlook 2010.

Email Quotas

Email quota has been increased from 250 MB to 500 MB. We are frequently asked why email quotas are relatively small when compared to how cheap computer storage has become. Your email inbox is not a simple file. It is a highly indexed, database-like, folder that is designed for fast access. When this file grows very large the inbox becomes slow, inefficient, and prone to errors or corruption. We assign quotas that are a balance between user convenience and performance.

Archival

In the Exchange system all your email will be archived for you. There is no need to keep local archives. The archives are centralized on our servers and happen automatically. To access archives older than 5 years, you can select the M+ ARCHIVE link from within OWA. In OWA and Outlook you will also see a an M+ icon next to messages older than 1 year. This is a normal indication that those inbox items are also archived.

Exchange Synchronization and Portable Devices

With Exchange no information is saved locally to your computer or device. This means that your email, calendar, contacts, and tasks will be identical on each computer and device you use. Please note that portable devices will not receive email after the upgrade without reconfiguration. Details on computer and device configuration are in the Documentation section of this website.

Having completed this section please move on to Documentation, Videos, and Frequently Asked Questions for more information.