Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for Exchange Mail
1. What are some of the benefits of using Exchange mail service?
Web access to e-mail in Exchange is significantly improved. The user interface is Outlook Web App (OWA) and is very easy to use and provides much greater functionality than the Netmail or YUMS Webmail client. For mobile devices with ActiveSync capabilities you will be able to synchronize with Exchange for your calendar, contacts, as well as your email Inbox and folders.
Another huge improvement is Exchange’s collaborative features including the ability to easily schedule meetings with others, as well as share calendars and contacts with your colleagues as desired.
Finally, ITS has invested in a state of the art robust Exchange 2010 architecture which eliminates virtually all single points of failure through redundancies including hardware, software, and data. We have built in the ability to either automatically or manually fail-over resources as necessary to provide you with a highly available and robust email system.
2. Who can use Exchange?
All faculty and staff on YUMS and Netmail will be migrated to Exchange 2010. Students, alumni, postdocs, and others are being migrated to Gmail under a separate project. The end result will be the retiring of YUMS and Netmail which will save the University a lot of money in maintenance and support of these various systems.
3. Is it mandatory that I switch to Exchange?
All faculty and staff on YUMS and Netmail will be switching to Exchange system.
4. Are there special requirements to have an Exchange account?
No. But if you want to use a mail client, we recommend using Outlook 2007, or Outlook 2010 for a Windows computer and Entourage 2008 with web services and Outlook 2011 for the Macintosh computers.
5. Will my e-mail address change?
No. It will remain the same.
6. How do I access my email from the web?
You can use Outlook Web App (OWA) to access your email from the web. You can visit OWA Information page for more info but simply typing owa.yu.edu or owa.einstein.yu.edu in your browser will get you to the login screen.
7. Can I use a Mac email client to access my email?
Yes, Entourage 2008 with web services or Outlook 2011 are the only supported clients for Mac.
8. Can I import my contacts?
Yes, ITS will assist you with this process if you have responded to our scheduling requests.
9. Will my mail filtering rules be brought into my new Exchange mailbox?
No. Rules must be re-created within Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Web App (OWA).
10. Can I still use POP?
No, POP is a very crude and outdated email protocol and will no longer be supported.
11. If I used POP before, how do I get my old email into Outlook after I have set it up for Exchange?
The email migration team will have to be notified before July 31, 2011 regarding this matter. After the 31st, you will need to contact helpdesk (helpdesk@yu.edu) to move all your local email data to Exchange.
12. What is the e-mail quota on Exchange?
The default quota is 4 GB.
13. Can I set a vacation or away message?
Yes. The out-of-office assistant is available within all versions of Outlook and Entourage, and Outlook Web App.
14. What are the size restrictions for email messages and attachments?
The maximum size is 20 MB.
15. Is Exchange Outlook Web App ADA compliant?
Yes. According to Microsoft, "In OWA Light, we have ensured that we have a strong story in place for the majority of screen readers for blind users, as well both user and system scalable fonts and layout for low vision users."
16. Can I keep using my own preferred e-mail program (e.g., Thunderbird, Apple Mail, etc.) instead of Outlook or Entourage?
It is recommended that you use the full-featured clients, Outlook 2007/2010/2011 [mac] or Entourage 2008 with web services, to leverage the Exchange capabilities, and be able to use the Calendar options. If you choose to use anything other than a supported client we cannot guarantee it will work properly in failover scenarios which might be scheduled for maintenance, but also could be automatic when certain failures occur (i.e. power outage at WILF).
17. Will I lose all my old e-mail, attachments, contact lists, and folders?
No. In certain cases it may be necessary to use an alternate means to import or access the previous data, but this is not typically necessary.