UC Merced Email Guide

Contents

Introduction to UC Merced's email system

UCM Mail is an IMAP4 compliant email system that can be accessed via the web or with any email client that supports IMAP and SSL. All students, faculty, and staff are assigned an email account using their UCMNetID, such as UCMNetID@ucmerced.edu. Official University electronic correspondence will be sent to this address. The UCM Mail web client allows setting vacation messages and checking server storage use.

IMAP mail systems keep email on a central server. Restrictions apply to how much email may be stored and for how long. More information about these restrictions and other aspects of using email is available in the Email FAQ.

Email Quota

The Email quota for all Faculty, Staff and Students is 1 GB.

Email quota is the amount of email that a user can store on the mail server. If the assigned allocation is filled up, no new mail can be delivered to the user's mailbox and the sender will be notified that email could not be delivered. Users who are utilizing a major portion of their default quota should consider moving or storing email in their personal folders. In addition, as a suggestion, you should consider downloading attachments to your local computer and remove them from your inbox, as they are usually much bigger than the email text itself.

What to do if you go over quota

If you receive a message saying that you are at 100% quota, you should immediately remove messages from the email server. Once you've freed up some space, you will be able to receive incoming messages and will also be able to send outgoing messages.

Tips For Managing Your Quota

The following are email clients recommended to manage and store your emails onto your local hard drive.

Configuring popular email programs

The following is a list of popular email programs and links to information available on configuring them to use various UC Merced IT services. Depending on the program, links may be provided to help configure the program, and to integrate UCM Directory search  functionality.

Emptying of Trash and SPAM folders

Unwanted email left on the mail server represents a significant percentage of personal mail account and server space. Mail moved to the "Trash" folder will consume personal mail account and server capacity, if the trash is not emptied.

For users that have been moved to the new email server and have been upgraded to 1 GB of email quota space, Information Technology will automatically delete messages in your "Trash" or "Spam" folders that are more than 14 days old. Removing these messages will help you avoid wasting storage space on unwanted data, but still provide opportunity to review and move any messages that may have accidentally been marked as "Spam" or "Trash."

Messages that have been moved off of the email server and downloaded to local Outlook, Thunderbird, or Mac Mail folders are not affected.

Handling SPAM, Dangerous and Junk Email

Viruses and worms are malicious pieces of software that are typically transmitted via email, by the exploitation of design flaws in operating systems, web browsers, database software, and other commonly used software. They may interfere with the stability and functioning of your computer and many applications. Click here for more information about viruses and personal Firewalls.

SPAM is email that contains unwanted content, solicitations, may be fraudulent. Junk email is legitimate but potentially unwanted email, such as if you have been added to an unwanted newsletter subscription. Click here form more information about SPAM and Junk Email

Attachments through Email

While email is the most common means of communication here at UC Merced, it is important to keep in mind that email is not intended as a method of transferring large files. UCMIT recommends to our users not send emails with large attachments but use other file transfer solutions.

For more information about maximum attachment size and stripping of emails, click here.

Mailing lists

Mailing lists may be created to facilitate group discussions for academic and university business purposes. This web-managed service is available to faculty, staff, and students. Our service, UC Mailman, uses the GNU Mailing List Manager, Mailman, and supports built-in archiving, automatic bounce processing, digest delivery, and more.

The UC Mailman service includes a page allowing users to easily create a new list as well as two help manuals: one for quick reference as well as an in-depth guide.

Email for Alumni

The University of California of Merced provides lifetime Email routing to all alumni. This allows email sent to your UC Merced email address to be delivered to whatever current email account you specify (such as, Gmail or Hotmail accounts). UCM alumni will continue to have their email storage for one semester plus 15 days after their graduation or leaving school. You should set email routing before that time runs out. This is done via the Identity Management channel within the portal at https://my.ucmerced.edu

Emails messages that are sent to your UC Merced account after the one semester plus 15 day grace period, without being routed to a new address, will be automatically deleted.

Configuring Your Cellphone for email

Click here for directions on how to update your cellphone to receive email from the new email server.


Looking for help?

We offer a number of tutorials and FAQs available in the Guides & FAQs section.

If you have any questions, problems, or comments, please contact the IT Help Desk via email at helpdesk@ucmerced.edu, via phone at 209.228.HELP (4357), or visit them in the Classroom and Office Building room 132A.