Computing & Information Services
Migrating from Your Reed User Account
Moving on From Reed — Electronically
Congratulations graduates! You may be wondering what happens to your Reed computing accounts after you graduate. Over the summer, CUS will close email and home server accounts of graduated seniors. We will send a notification of account closure at least two weeks prior to the accounts shutting down, reminding you to retrieve any important data you may have. After the closure date, your Home server will no longer be accessible and mail sent to your closed @reed.edu address will bounce back to the sender. If you are working for Reed over the summer, have your supervisor contact CUS so we'll keep your account open for the duration.Note: Beginning summer 2008, graduated seniors will keep their Reed Kerberos username and password for logging into IRIS and the IRC/Library computers. Though home server and email access will still be closed.
Here's what you need to do:
- Notify Contacts in Your Address Book
- Setup Email Forwarding
- Backup Your Reed Email Account
- Backup Your Home Server Files
Notifying Your Contacts Automatically
You should inform anyone who e-mails you that your account will be closing, and that they should direct future communications elsewhere.
Webmail provides the ability to set up a vacation filter which can be used to inform your contacts of your account closure and how they may e-mail you in the future. To set up your Vacation Filter, log into webmail and click on the Vacation/Filters tab at the top of the page. Click on the rule called Vacation and fill in the Subject and Reason fields. Click Save and Enable to activate the automatic response filter.
From this point forward, an automatic response will generated in response to anyone who sends you mail at your @reed.edu account.
Set Up Email Forwarding
Before closure, you can set up e-mail forwarding to an alternative account in order to maintain important contacts. Webmail has a Forwarding filter you can set up to do this. Click on the Vacation/Filters tab at the top of the page, go to the rule called Forward, and fill in the fields. Click Save and Enable to activate the automatic response filter.
Reed also offers graduated seniors an @alumni.reed.edu address which forwards messages to an e-mail address of your choosing. The @alumni.reed.edu is not an email account, it just forwards messages to wherever you choose.
Graduated seniors are able to set up an alumni.reed.edu account by logging into IRIS. A link called Senior Email Forwarding will appear and allow you to set your @alumni.reed.edu address, as well as the address to which your e-mail will be forwarded. Submissions will be approved manually by alumni office staff, therefore, please allow some time for changes to be processed.
Back up your Reed Email Account
Backing Up Email Using Thunderbird
An e-mail client such as Thunderbird can be used to save all your e-mail to your own computer. To do this, set up Thunderbird to retrieve e-mail from your Reed account using the instructions in the link above. Create a new folder under Local Folders.
You will then be able to drag and drop single e-mails, entire folders, and even your entire Inbox from your Reed webmail account, into your new folder, thus moving each message, complete with attachments, to your computer.
Note: The messages are moved, not copied. Because they are now on your personal machine, Reed will no longer back them up for you. We recommend that you back them up on your own.
If you want to back up your Thunderbird mail, it lives in the two directories called ImapMail and Mail. On OS X, these can be found in ~/Library/Thunderbird. On Windows, you can find them by typing %appdata%/Thunderbird/Profiles/ into the Run dialog. Then navigate to the ********.default folder. By backing up these folders in a secure location, you ensure that you can restore your saved e-mail even on a completely different computer.
Backing Up Email Using Apple Mail
To back up your email messages in Apple Mail, go to the Mailbox menu and choose New Mailbox. For each folder, select all messages (Edit > Select All) within the folder, right (control)-click them, and move them to folder you just made. Make sure the new folder is in the "On My Mac" portion of folders.
Note: Because these messages are now on your personal machine, Reed will no longer back them up for you. We recommend that you back them up on your own.
To back up your mail, go to the Finder, use the Go menu > Go to folder, and type ~/Library/. Copy (drag) the Mail and MailDownloads folders to an external hard drive or burn them to a CD.
Backing Up Email Using Webmail
Webmail has the ability to export your e-mail in MBOX format, however, it is only able to export small chunks of data at a time. This method is practical only for small folders containing few attachments. To export the contents of a folder in MBOX format, log into webmail and click on the Folders icon.
Place a checkmark next to the folder whose contents you wish to export.
Then click to expand the Choose Action: menu. Select Download Folder(s) [.zip format].
If successful, the messages will be downloaded in a single ZIP file. If the contents of the folder were too large, an error would appear. Once downloaded, you can extract the zip archive and drag the MBOX file into the Local Folders section of Thunderbird, where they will be imported and made available for viewing locally. The MBOX file can also be read with a text editor such as TextEdit (OS X) or Notepad (Windows).
Backing Up Email Using Gmail
Follow these steps to import all emails from your Reed email account to your Gmail account.
- Log in to your Gmail account.
- On the top right of your Gmail window, click on Settings.
- Under the Settings area, select the Accounts tab. Find the setting Get mail from other accounts, then click on the link Add another mail account next to it.
- In the pop-up window, type your Reed email address (eg smithj@reed.edu), then click on Next Step.
- On the next page, provide your Reed username (eg smithj) and Reed email password. For the POP Server, enter imap.reed.edu and for Port 995.
- Check the option Leave a copy of retrieved message on the server.
- Check the option Always use a secure connection (SSL). Check the option Label incoming messages, then in the pull-down menu select New label and type a unique label for your Reed emails (eg Reedmailz).
- If you check the option Archive incoming messages, your Reed emails will be visible only when you click on All Mail on the Gmail sidebar, several lines below Inbox, with the unique label that you just assigned. If you do not check this option, your Reed emails might flood your Gmail inbox as new messages.
- Click on Add Account.
- On the next page, select the radio button to No, then click on Finish.
Gmail will begin importing all your Reed emails immediately. While it may take some time to complete the process, you may sign out or close the window without affecting the import.
Exporting Your Reed Address Book
Address books maintained through the webmail interface can be easily exported. To do so, log into webmail and click on the Address Book tab near the top of the page. Then, click on the Import/Export button. You may export the entries in your book by choosing the desired export format from the dropdown menu near the bottom and then clicking Export. Your contacts can then be imported into a mail client such as Thunderbird via its Address Book interface.
Now that you are an alumni, you can get an alumni account to continue using the IRC's.
