Transferring Email From a UW Email Account to UW Outlook Live
IT Connect > Teamwork and Collaboration Tools > UW Windows Live > Transferring Email to UW Outlook Live
Things to Consider Before Transferring Your Data
Before transferring your email, consider the following:
- Cleanup: It might be an opportunity to do some pruning or housecleaning to get rid of messages or data you no longer need. That may make transferring easier and faster and make things easier to find later. It might even be worth considering abandoning your old email and starting fresh.
- Get familiar: You might want to get familiar with the new service before moving messages to be sure you'll be able to work with messages as you wish.
- Originals: Most methods for transferring your data do not delete the original. It will remain unless you delete it yourself (or until your account service expires). That may be helpful if you need to refer to it, but with new mail delivered to UW Outlook Live, things will quickly get out of synchronization.
- Double-check: After transferring data you should assure yourself that it is all in place and not corrupt before you delete the original.
- Time commitment: If you have a lot of data to transfer, the process could take a long time -- maybe hours. Plan accordingly.
Using UW Outlook Live to Transfer Your UW Email Folders to UW Outlook Live
- StepsActions
- Log on to your Manage UW Windows
Live page and make sure your Outlook Live
Status is set to "Active, Receiving email." If it is
not set to receive email, change your UW Email
forwarding and/or your MyUW.net
email forwarding to point to your UW Outlook Live account.
- Log on to UW Outlook Live at http://www.outlook.com/ and
click on the Options link in the upper right corner.
- In Account > Connected
Accounts, click New.
Note: If your Options page does not have a Connected Accounts section, you probably have the blind and low vision option enabled. You will need to disable it by clicking on the Accessibility tab, uncheck the box next to Use the blind and low vision experience, and click Save. Sign out of your account and back in in order for the change to take effect. - Enter your UW email address as <your_UWNetID>@u.washington.edu (where <your_UWNetID> is replaced with your actual UW NetID) and UW NetID password in the fields provided and click Next.
- You will receive an error message about a secured connection not being established; click No.
- You will receive another error message about Outlook Web App
not connecting to your account. Within that error message, click
on the IMAP link to enter IMAP connection
settings.
- Enter the following account setting information, replacing any
occurrence of <your_UWNetID> with your own UW NetID
without the brackets. (Click here to see an example of the
settings for joeuser@u.washington.edu. The example will open in a
new window.)
Display name: your name
E-mail address: <your_UWNetID>@u.washington.edu
User name: <your_UWNetID>
Password: your UW NetID password
Incoming server: <your_UWNetID>.deskmail.washington.edu
Authentication: Basic
Encryption: SSL
Port: 993 - When finished, click Save. The process will send a verification email to the address you entered in Step 6. If you want to use that address as your From address for some or all of your messages sent within the Outlook Web App, follow the instructions in the email. Please note that the email message may have been delivered to your junk folder. If you receive an error message about your address not being valid because it is a primary SMTP or proxy address, log on to your Manage UW Windows Live page, change your UW Outlook Live "From" address to your @uw.edu address, and repeat the steps on this page. You can change your "From" address back to your @u.washington.edu address once you have successfully moved your email messages.
- Now wait. The process of transferring your email may take anywhere from a few minutes to many hours, depending on how much email you have on your UW Email account. When the transfer process is complete, the status listed in the Connected Accounts section will change from Downloading to OK. In the meantime, it is OK to return to your UW Outlook Live mail screen or even log out of UW Outlook Live.
- When you return to your UW Outlook Live mail screen, you may notice some folders you have never seen before such as remote_pinerc, remote_addrbook, .forward, .mailboxlist, and others that start with a period. Those folders can be deleted as they do not contain your email. (They are system folders used by Web Alpine on the UW Email system.)
- If you are not seeing all of your folders, they are probably
nested under the mail folder. You can click on
the white arrow to the left of the mail folder in order to expose
the folders. See image below for example of collapsed and expanded
folder views.
Importing Your Contacts Into UW Outlook Live
Contacts are stored in the program you use to connect to your email account. If you normally use Thunderbird, for example, to access your UW Email account, only Thunderbird has access to the contact information that you have created there. If you are going to use the same program to access your UW Outlook Live account, you may not have to do anything to transfer your contacts.
If, however, you are switching programs or you are going to use a Web browser to connect to UW Outlook Live, you will need to transfer your contacts in the form of a comma-separated values (CSV) file and then import that CSV into your UW Outlook Live account using MS Outlook 2007. (UW Outlook Live accessed via a Web browser does not have the ability to import the CSV file.) Follow these instructions:
- StepsActions
- Export your contacts as a CSV file. See the help text for your particular email program for instructions on how to export the contacts as a CSV file. If you use Alpine or Web Alpine, here are instructions on converting a Pine address list to a CSV file (ignore the reference to Outlook Express).
- Configure MS
Outlook 2007 to access your UW Outlook Live account.
Please note the following as you configure MS Outlook 2007 to
access your UW Outlook Live account:
- Enter your email address as: your_UWNetID@ol.uw.edu
- You will be prompted to log in and asked for a username. Your username is your UW Windows Live ID in the form of your_UWNetID@uw.edu
- Import the CSV file containing your contacts into MS Outlook 2007.
