How to Transition Your UMBC Email to Gmail

Wed, 21 Oct 2015 10:29:06 -0400

In 2010, DoIT began moving users from UMBC hosted email to UMBC Gmail, with new UMBC accounts being created with Gmail.

Many faculty and staff who didn't convert to Gmail when it was first launched did not know that they can move to Gmail at any time and take advantage of the features found in Gmail. Faculty and staff are not required to migrate but DoIT wants everyone to know that this is always available and will assist in the transition process if needed.

Your email address will not change. Once you choose to migrate your mail account to Google@UMBC, DoIT will make changes behind the scenes that will allow your mail to be delivered to the new Google@UMBC environment.

Old UMBC hosted email with limited mail storage. In Gmail, there is no limit to the amount of mail you can store.

Benefits of switching include a much improved email system and greater support from the employees of the Technology Support Center due to its current students not having access to the legacy system. There is also a collection of FAQs that will walk you through the process.

Before migrating, There are a few things you can do prior to migrating to make things easier on you. Clean up your existing mail by deleting old mail and folders. After that, move any Local Mail Folders on your computer's hard drive to your existing UMBC mail account before your migrate.

Copying these local messages up to your existing UMBC mail account will make them available to our migration tools when you choose to opt in and they will be moved to your Google@UMBC account for you.

Migrating is a simple, and it starts by clicking a migration link that will launch a script, copying your locally hosted email to the UMBC Gmail environment.

From here you have the option of changing your password. You only need to change your password if you want to access your mail from your phone, tablet or a desktop mail client AND you haven't changed your password since January 1, 2014. If you changed your password after that date, it is already synchronized.

The Gmail interface offers a much cleaner look and more customizable options such as themes. Gmail also offers enhanced features such as searching and tagging messages.