Email

Configuration

  • How do I configure email on my personal computer?
  • Can I have all my MIT mail forwarded to Goggle/Yahoo/etc?
    • Yes, though we strongly discourage you from doing so; almost all who do end up regretting it and switching back. 
    • Reasons not to forward your email:
      • All modern email clients allow one to configure multiple email accounts with unified views for mailboxes. For instance one can view one's Inbox across all accounts at once. (We find this is the primary rationale behind those wishing to forward their email)
      • You must use your MIT email address when writing many MIT email lists and all DUSP lists. Doing so is cumbersome if emailing from a non-MIT account
      • You may not have read the privacy terms for the third party mail service you wish to use and may be aghast if you do. For instance many reserve the right to read your email and sell its content to advertisers, Facebook, Google and others
      • Consider too that your correspondents are likely not to have read and agreed to your third party's email policy. Your correspondents may not wish for their correspondence with you to be read and sold as described above
      • Using third party email service makes it all the more difficult for recipients to judge email legitimate or spam
    • Email forwarding: Enabling (NOT recommended)
    • Email forwarding: Disabling (recommended)
  • What client do you recommend?
    • Macintosh: Mail, Outlook
    • Windows: Outlook
    • Watch out for some free Mail clients (e.g. Spark) which will take a copy all of your MIT email and sell it to Google.

Quota

  • What is my MIT email quota?
  • How can I check my usage?
    • Visit owa.mit.edu, login, then hover your mouse over your name as appears on left hand side of screen above your mailbox list
  • How large an attachment can i send?
    • Visit: What is the attachment size limit on MIT's email system?. Also keep in mind that although MIT's email system allows rather large attachments, one cannot count on other email systems being as generous. Rule of thumb: do not email a document larger than 2 MB in size. Instead, send Dropbox link or similar.
  • What form of attachment should i send?
    • Unless the document needs editing on the receiving end, PDF is your best bet. PDF is the only format certain to retain formatting, is universal and is free. Macintosh users can save anything as a PDF by selecting 'PDF > Save as PDF' from print dialog window.
  • How can I manage my email quota?
    • Go through your Inbox messages regularly and delete email messages you no longer need. If you are concerned about deleting something prematurely, do note that items you delete get moved to the 'Deleted Items' folder (or 'Trash') and stay there for a few more weeks
    • Any other items you want to keep should be moved to local storage as local folders. You can set your mail program (Outlook or Mail) with local folders that won't take any mail quota space. Keep in mind that any local folders should be stored in a location that is backed up, in case the hard drive where they are stored fails. Also note that local folders are only accessible from the specific computer where they are created. If you occasionally use owa.mit.edu to access email when away from your main computer, you won't see these folders
    • Move any email attachments that you wish to archive to your local computer (or Athena directory) and delete them from the Inbox. Attachments can take up a lot of space. In order to quickly identify the biggest attachments, sort your mailbox by size. That will save a lot of time when going through this
    • Be sure to go through your 'Sent' folder regularly to delete items you don't need, or to move them to your local machine for long-term storage. Also note that you may delete large attachments from 'Sent' folder without deleting the actual email. This is useful if you want to keep a record of an email you sent, but don't need to keep the attachment embedded to it
    • If you have a Trash mailbox (folder) on the post office server, make sure it's emptied regularly.

Mailing Lists

  • What are the principal mail lists I should be using while at DUSP?
    • Detailed information on DUSP (and Architecture) mailing lists can be found here: Email Lists

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