Managing Multiple Email Accounts
Most faculty and staff have two UW email accounts, one managed by Computing & Communications in Seattle (your Pine account), and one managed by Information Systems at UW Bothell (accessed through Outlook). For general information about those accounts, see Accounts on the IS Documentation web site.
We understand the difficulty of having two separate University of Washington email addresses. UW Bothell Information Systems strongly encourages you to forward mail from one account to the other to be sure of receiving all mail. By forwarding your mail, you make the decision to read all of your mail in one location, using one application.
This document explains the advantages and disadvantages of the various ways of consolidating your email in one place.
Forwarding mail from Pine to Outlook
For instructions on forwarding your mail from Pine to Outlook, see Forwarding your Homer Mail.
Information Systems recommends forwarding your Pine (Homer) mail to Outlook as the preferred method of consolidating your mail. This method offers the following benefits
- Ease of use, with Outlook's graphical user interface.
- Simple, easy to use attachment functions.
- Local availability of technical help, rather than in Seattle.
- Regular access to Outlook's calendar feature, and the ability to schedule events with other Bothell users
- One forwarding command forwards all of your mail. You can be sure of getting all mail in one spot.
- In the event of a network outage or disruption with Seattle, you can continue to work with your local Bothell account with minimal problems.
If you have been using Pine for a while, you might be reluctant to make a change. We address some concerns you may have here:
- You rely heavily on your Pine address books, including distribution lists. We have written a procedure that converts your Pine address books and imports them into Outlook. Even users with fairly complex address books have had success with this conversion. See Converting Pine Address Books to Outlook for details and instructions.
- You have a lot of mail stored and organized in your Pine account, and you want to retain that folder organization. Your Pine mail will retain its current state of organization. You just need to think of it differently. Homer will still be the place where your old Pine mail is archived. Your old mail will remain accessible to you. You will still be able to log onto Homer and read your old Pine mail. The only difference is that new mail will come to Outlook instead.
- People already know your Pine address (yourname@u.washington.edu). You don't need to give people your new address; they can still send mail to you at u.washington, and you will receive it at your bothell.washington account. You can even create a rule that puts all of your Pine mail in one folder within Outlook, so you will know it came from there. This keeps the two accounts separate, in a way. See Using the Rules Wizard to Filter Messages as They Arrive for details and instructions.
For instructions on forwarding your mail from Pine to Outlook, see Forwarding your Homer Mail.
Forwarding Mail from Outlook to Pine
We understand that some people might want to get their mail in Pine, with the following benefits:
- It's familiar and comfortable.
- You can continue to add to the folders of mail already organized there.
But you should be aware of the difficulties that result from forwarding from Outlook to Pine
- You can not forward your mail with one command and have all of it go to one place. Instead, you have to create rules for various situations. One rule will be for all mail addressed to you specifically. But you will also need a rule for each distribution list that sends mail to your Outlook account. The possibility of missed email exists if a new distribution list comes along that you don't know about.
- Computing Communications in Seattle is your technical support for Pine mail, instead of locally and readily available Information Systems at UW Bothell. Because of this, we can only offer limited support for forwarding to Pine.
For instructions on forwarding your mail from Outlook to Pine, see Forwarding your Bothell Mail.
