e-Mail Help

All ESSC staff, and some students, have Microsoft Exchange e-mail accounts managed by IT Services. The ITS e-Mail web pages can be found here. The Department of Meteorology also has a lot of useful information about e-mail on its IT web pages, including client configuration and troubleshooting guides. The IT-Met e-mail page can be found here.

Additional information about using Exchange e-mail can be found below.

Microsoft Exchange e-Mail System

On the 14th October 2010 ITS took over the running of ESSC's e-mail. From that date on, mail sent to the nerc-essc addresses (e.g. abc@mailNOSPAMPLEASE.nerc-essc.ac.uk) will be redirected to the University's Microsoft Exchange system. This change affects users in several ways, as described below.

1. Username and password. Mail is accessed using University usernames and passwords rather than ESSC usernames and passwords. If you have forgotten your University username or password (or didn't realise you had a University account at all) you will have to contact the ITS helpdesk. It can sometimes take a few days for a new password to be supplied via the helpdesk.
2. Webmail. Outlook Web Access (OWA) is used instead of ESSC Webmail
3. eMail clients and Mobile devices. Mobile devices (including iPhones) and e-Mail client programs (such as Thunderbird, Evolution and Outlook) have to be configured in order to gain access to the new e-mail accounts. Links to configuration instructions for various mobile devices can be found on the ITS staff e-mail web page, and e-mail client program configuration instructions can be found here and here.
4. Microsoft Outlook. Configuration instructions for Outlook 2007 and 2010 can be found here. Instructions for older versions of Outlook can be found here. On a Mac, follow the Windows instructions and then un-check the box marked "Configure automatically". This allows you to manually specify the Exchange server address - https://www.owamail.reading.ac.uk/ews/exchange.asmx
5. Use of external e-mail accounts. If you use an external account to send and receive university or ESSC email you will have to set up redirection from your Exchange account by creating a Rule, as described here. Please note that the "Redirect" option is not available to select through OWA settings. At the moment, the only way to set up a mail redirection to Google Mail or any other external account is through Microsoft Outlook. This situation is likely to change once ESSC users are migrated to Exchange version 2010, which is expected to happen some time in the next few weeks.
6. Google Mail users are recommended to use POP to download mail from Exchange to Google. To set this up go to "Settings" -> "Accounts and Import" -> "Check mail using POP3" -> "Add POP3 account". The POP server address is pop.exchange.reading.ac.uk and the port number is 995 (usually the default). Make sure the "Use secure connection (SSL) box is checked. If you set up a redirection rule instead, you will lose the ability to "Reply to All" if message is sent to you and one or more other recipients. This is because all the other recipients' addresses are removed from mail redirected to Google in this manner,
7. Outgoing mail appears to come from University e-mail addresses rather than ESSC addresses.
8. Spam filtering is carried out by the AutoSpam system.
9. Technical support is provided by the ITS Helpdesk
10. Mailing Lists. The old ESSC mailing list addresses don't work any more. The new addresses are as follows:
    essc-all@listsNOSPAMPLEASE.reading.ac.uk (everyone at ESSC)
    essc-staff@listsNOSPAMPLEASE.reading.ac.uk (staff at ESSC)
    essc-pgrads@listsNOSPAMPLEASE.reading.ac.uk (postgrads at ESSC)
    Non members can post to the lists (e.g. for Met. seminar notifications), but the first time they do a message goes to the list administrators for approval.

Please remember not to send mail using your ESSC account, because messages sent to other ESSC users using their ESSC addresses may not be redirected to Exchange. If this happens, the recipients may never know that you have sent them a message. To avoid this please delete SMTP settings for odin.nerc-essc.ac.uk (or mercury.nerc-essc.ac.uk) from your email clients.

We have been migrated to the older version of Exchange (2003), but will soon be migrated again to Exchange 2010 along with other Reading University staff. Users will not notice much difference when this happens, except for extra features being available via Outlook Web Access. ITS will notify individual users about the migration process before it takes place.

-- DanBretherton - 29 Sep 2010