Working with BuckeyeMail

As OSU's Office of Information Technology (OIT) offers students the opportunity to migrate from the osu.edu central mail servers to BuckeyeMail, we have developed the following information so that you can make an informed decision and use BuckeyeMail effectively, should you choose to use it. The BuckeyeMail service is only being offered to students, so faculty and staff need not be concerned.

What's offered here deals with various interactions with the departmental mail environment and BuckeyeMail. For for information on BuckeyeMail, see this list of articles from OIT.

NOTE: The osu.edu mail server and the BuckeyeMail server are separate and distinct systems. Please keep this in mind as you review the material presented here.

Do I have to use BuckeyeMail?

If you are forwarding your osu.edu E-mail to another system (and if you are, we hope you are forwarding it to the local departmental mail server, as recommended), you need not change anything. If, on the other hand, you are actively using your osu.edu E-mail account via OIT's Webmail and/or an E-mail client (like Eudora, Outlook Express, etc.), then you can opt to have your account migrated to BuckeyeMail when OIT sends you a message indicating they're ready for your decision. If you don't make a decision by June 30, 2009, OIT will start forwarding your osu.edu E-mail to BuckeyeMail. To be clear (and to reiterate what has already been said), if you are already forwarding your osu.edu E-mail, you need not do anything; nothing will change on June 30.

If you choose to activate your BuckeyeMail account, and your osu.edu account is currently set to forward to your departmental E-mail account (or elsewhere), the existing forwarding will be lost. Activating your BuckeyeMail account implicitly changes the forwarding on your osu.edu account to point to your BuckeyeMail account. As a means to resolve this, please see the next section of this document on how to keep your departmental account active.

How do I keep my departmental account active?

If you are forwarding your departmental E-mail to another system, you run the risk of having your local E-mail account marked as inactive, since you are not directly accessing it to check your mail. As such, the mail server sees no activity on your account and assumes you've stopped using it. The most direct result of this is that you are removed from any local mailing lists that are automatically maintained by the departmental mail server, so you could miss out on important messages. The mail server will mark any account as inactive when it sees no accesses for 180 days (or about six months).

BuckeyeMail has a function that allows you to check your mail on other systems without actually forwarding from those systems. OIT has even documented how you can use this feature to access mail that has already been delivered to your osu.edu account, after you've chosen to start forwarding your osu.edu mail to BuckeyeMail:

Moving Saved OSU Webmail Messages Into Buckeye Mail

You can use this same process to access your departmental E-mail and the departmental mail server will consider your account active so long as you do so. In the directions provided, make the following changes:

How do I send mail from the departmental network with my BuckeyeMail account with an E-mail client (e.g. Eudora, Outlook Express, etc.)?

The network firewall for the departmental LAN blocks access to outgoing mail servers (technically known as SMTP servers) except for the departmental mail server. You will need to change how your E-mail client sends mail to follow the guidelines presented here:

SMTP Authentication

These directions are for someone who's using the departmental mail server to both send and receive E-mail. In the case of BuckeyeMail, you will need to modify only the mechanism in your E-mail client used to send mail, but you will still be using the BuckeyeMail servers to read your E-mail (i.e. for incoming mail)). So, where the directions on setting up SMTP authentication say to use the same settings as your incoming server (or words to that effect), you will actually need to specify your departmental E-mail account credentials (username and password), explicitly. Making this change should allow your E-mail client to work anywhere you have your system connected to the Internet.

Why don't I see replies to messages from my BuckeyeMail account?

The departmental mail server is configured to send any replies to messages from the BuckeyeMail server to the corresponding osu.edu mail account. If your osu.edu account isn't forwarding to your BuckeyeMail account, these replies will be found on the system to which your osu.edu account is forwarding.