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UW Email

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Using UW Email

UW Email (also known as UW Deskmail) is general email service available for current UW students, faculty, and staff; UW retirees; and some other affiliates of the University. Alumni and other former UW students can get email accounts through the MyUW.net service.

Three ways are available for you to interact with and use UW Email:

Use an email program on your computer or phone
  • Configuration instructions for several programs are in the Configuring Your Email Program for UW Email section below.
  • Many smartphones can run email programs that can be configured to work with UW Email. Configuration instructions can be found on the Smartphones pages
Use Web Alpine through your Web browser
  • Web Alpine works well for email when traveling, such as when you are at a conference or a cyber-cafe.
  • Web Alpine does not work well over slow connections, such as when you connect by modem.
  • Web Alpine allows you to save attachments directly to your local desktop computer.
  • For Web Alpine to work properly, the browser you are using must have SSL security, cookies, and Javascript turned on.
Use Alpine on Homer, Dante, or other computers
  • Alpine is a text-only email program. It cannot display graphics. Alpine has many power features.
  • You access Alpine with a terminal program such as TeraTerm SSH for Windows (available on the Tools for Safe and Secure Computing page) or the Terminal application on Macintosh OSX computers.
  • Attachments cannot be saved directly to your desktop computer. A file transfer program such as WIN SCP ( available on the Tools for Safe and Secure Computing page) must be used to move the file from Homer or Dante to your local computer.
  • Using a terminal session program and Alpine works well on slower computers or when you have a slow connection speed, such as when you are using a modem.

Configuring Your Email Programs for UW Email

Instructions for Configuring Specific Programs

Program Microsoft Windows
Windows
Macintosh
Macintosh
Other
Mozilla Thunderbird Thunderbird 2.x for Windows Thunderbird for Macintosh (OS X only)  
Windows Mail (Vista) Windows Mail    
Outlook Express* Outlook Express for Windows    
Macintosh OS-X Mailer   Macintosh OS X Mail v3  
PC-Pine PC-Pine    
iPhone Mail     iPhone iPhone Mail

*Note: If you are moving from using any of the Alpine (Pine) family of email programs to Outlook Express, a Pine to Outlook Express utility is available to help you move your address book.

Limited Support Programs

Basic configuration information is available for some other programs.

Settings Summary for Other Programs

If the email program you want to configure for UW Email is not listed above, try using the values in the table below:

When the program asks for: It is looking for: You enter:
Email address Your "@u." email address your_uwnetid@u.washington.edu*
Incoming server UW IMAP server your_uwnetid.deskmail.washington.edu *
User name your mail account your_uwnetid *
Account path prefix IMAP directory path mail
SMTP host UW SMTP server smtp.washington.edu **
Address server, host name UW LDAP server directory.washington.edu
Address server, BaseDN LDAP search root o=University of Washington, c=US

* Where "your_uwnetid" is replaced by your actual UW NetID.

**If you are using an Internet Service Provider (ISP) OTHER than the UW then use the SMTP server provided by your ISP.

Alpine on Homer, Dante, and Other Computers

Use a terminal session program to connect to the Homer or Dante computers to use the Alpine email program.

Managing Your UW Email

Check your disk space usage
  • Go to Your Usage of UW Central Storage Space
    • See how much space all your files, folders, and email are using
    • See total size of all your files compared to your storage space allocation
    • See which files are using the most space
Manage your UW Email services
  • Go to the Manage UW NetID Resources page
    • Forward your UW email to another address
    • Stop your UW email (All messages sent to your UW email address will be returned to the sender as undeliverable.)
Set a vacation message or filter, block, reject, or sort messages
  • Go to the Email Delivery Manager (EDM) pages
    • Control messages delivered to your account
    • Set a vacation message to be sent to anyone who sends you email while you are gone
    • Filter out spam into a separate folder
    • Block messages from a particular email address, deleting them without response
    • Reject messages from a particular email address, sending an automatic response and deleting the message
    • Sort messages automatically into folders as they arrive