Configuring E-Mail

NOTE Email is collected from the Computer Centre. ISG has nothing to do with managing email. Any authentication requested is requested by Computer Centre servers NOT ISG. USE YOUR COMPUTER CENTRE PASSWORD FOR EMAIL! Although we ensure your Computer Centre user ID is the same for the ISG labs, the passwords for these two domains are independent of each other(i.e. the passwords are not synchronised

  1. Start Outlook by clicking on Start\Programs\MS Office\Microsoft Outlook
  2. You will be prompted to enter your name and initials.
  3. Select Microsoft Exchange Server and click Next
  4. For Exchange Server enter owa.rhul.ac.uk
  5. For Mailbox enter your Mail alias (i.e. the part of your mail address before the @ sign. For example my alias is r.j.hall and my mail address is r.j.hall@rhul.ac.uk)
  6. Click Next
  7. Make sure "No" is selected and click next
  8. Click Finish
you should now be prompted for authentication
  • Enter your username (e.g. mlah999)
  • Enter The Domain Name as cc (cc stands for COMPUTER CENTRE)
  • Enter your COMPUTER CENTRE password (NOT the ISG one)
You should now be in your mailbox. I suggest you goto the view menu and deselect the "outlook Bar" and select "folder view" as this is much more manageable. If you want to set up automated rules for certain messages such as sorting mail list messages into sub folders or forwarding messages, goto tools\Rules Wizard on the main outlook window.

 

Exchange E-mail using IMAP

Many common e-mail clients (e.g. Outlook Express, Netscape, Pocket PC, Eudora) access mail servers using a protocol call POP or POP3. This protocol provides a limited range of features and several additional desirable facilities are available if you use an alternative protocol called IMAP, also supported by Outlook Express, Pocket PC and Netscape. Additional features include

Access to the full folder structure and not just to the Inbox
Message copies are kept on the server and therefore available easily at home or in College

Access to most ISP mail accounts is only possible via POP but Exchange supports IMAP and we encourage you to use it. It is not feasible here to describe exactly how to configure each mail client but details are given below for Outlook Express and only a few bits of key information are required to configure any email client.

You will need to:

Choose IMAP as the protocol
Select a server of the form exchn.rhul.ac.uk where you replace By the number of your Exchange server
Enter CC\username\mailname in the username field, replacing username by your RHUL username and mailname by the portion of your email address to the left of the @, normally initial.surname or firstname.surname.
Use your CC password.
Enter the SMTP mail server of your ISP in the SMTP field. You can find this out by looking at the configuration of your ISP mail account. If you are dialling directly into Royal Holloway use SMTP.RHUL.AC.UK. You can also use the Royal Holloway SMTP server if you make a VPN connection to the College after connecting to your ISP.

Please forward any queries to ITServiceDesk [at] rhul [dot] ac [dot] uk


Configuring Outlook Express for IMAP:


Before you do anything, please ascertain from Information services, the name of the server on which your mailbox resides, as this information is required for configuration. This will be in the form exchx.rhul.ac.uk where x is between 1 and 15.

Double click on the Outlook Express icon.

On the menu, Select tools

Select accounts

An Internet accounts dialogue box will appear.

Choose Add, then Mail.

The Internet connection wizard will now appear.

This will prompt you to add your name, click next, add your email address.

Next you will get a page requesting details of email server names

The first box you encounter details what type of mail server you have and is a drop down box. Choose IMAP.

Next, your incoming mail IMAP server will be owa.rhul.ac.uk

Your outgoing SMTP server will be smtp.rhul.ac.uk (You can also use the Royal Holloway SMTP server ‘secure-smtp.rhul.ac.uk’ but you must first ensure you have selected TLS for security on port 2525)

Now you need to fill in an account that you will logon with.

CC\userid\initial.surname

Choose yourself a name for this account it can be anything you like.

Connect using LAN, click next.

Finish.

Close the dialogue box completely.

In a few moments, you should see the account appear in the left hand pane and any messages you have received will be in the right hand pane.

Click on it, you will see a message saying -

No folders have been downloaded for this account, would you like to refresh the folder list?

Choose ok.

You should then see your Inbox folder and any other folders that you have.

You cannot use the global address book with Outlook Express, you have to use LDAP, to conduct a find operation, but you can import personal address books.

 

 

Linux access to Exchange using Evolution mail client

Evolution is the default mail client supplied on most Linux distributions. Almost every version today ships with a modern version of Evolution. If installed by default with your distro, you can locate it under the 'internet' catagory of the KDE or GNOME main menu structure. If you are unable to locate Evolution, check your distro's package installation media & documentation for instructions on how to install / add new applications or packages.

Evolution Homepage

 

To Install: (Apt-get Method for Debian-based distro's (Ubuntu etc))

Open up a terminal session (with root access), or append ‘sudo’ to the beginning of the following command:

apt-get install evolution evolution-exchange evolution-plugins

 

NOTE: If installing on other platforms, make sure you install both Evolution, and the Evolution Exchange Connector

 

To Configure:

Run Evolution from the Applications menu (it will be under ‘Internet’). When setting it up, use Exchange Server as the account type*, and then use https://owa.rhul.ac.uk as the server address. Leave everything else as default. Your username will be the Computer Center username ‘urai123’ and your password; your Computer Centre password (these are the same details you use to log onto the Outlook Web Access, student portal, and Moodle). If it prompts for a domain, enter ‘CC’ (short for Computer Centre).

* = If you do not see Exchange Server listed as an available account type, the Evolution Exchange Connector has not been installed.


To configure and access the Global Address List:

Set the Glocal Catalog server name to:

directory.rhul.ac.uk:3268

Linux access to IMAP using Alpine (Pine)

inbox-path=owa.rhul.ac.uk/ssl/user=cc\username\alias
eg..
inbox-path=owa.rhul.ac.uk/ssl/user=cc\uuaa008\joe.bloggs

smtp-server=secure-smtp.rhul.ac.uk:port number/tls/user=cc\username
eg..
smtp-server=secure-smtp.rhul.ac.uk:2525/tls/user=cc\uuaa008

For non secure SMTP you can specify the following but it will not be accessible from outside the firewall unless a VPN has been established

smtp-server=owa.rhul.ac.uk/user=cc\uuaa008

After you have done the initial account setup, you may need to go back in and modify the account to use a secure connection. Until you have done this, you will not be able to access your account.