Cmail accounts are provided automatically to all students (including undergraduates, graduate students, and professional students). To use your Cmail account, you simply need to set it up. You will continue to use your NetID@cornell.edu address (for example, ewe1@cornell.edu) with Cmail.
It's your choice whether to have your Cornell email routed to Cmail. Even if you don't use Cmail for email, you can still use its other features. (You can change the routing for your Cornell email through the Who I Am service -- you'll need your NetID and password.)
A second service for email, calendar, and collaboration -- Umail -- may be available in the future. At this point, a date has not been determined. Powered by Microsoft Live@edu with Outlook Live, Umail would include Outlook Live email and calendar with a 10 GB mailbox, Office Live Workspace, SkyDrive with 25 GB of storage, and more.
Generally speaking, faculty and staff will not have Cmail (or Umail) accounts, and students will not have accounts in the central Exchange service that faculty and staff began using in September 2009. Exceptions can be made to meet very specific needs.
Go to Cmail, click any of the "Sign in" links, and enter your Cornell NetID and password. Don't have your Cmail account yet? Get it.
Yes. No matter where you access your Cornell email, whether that's through Cmail or another email account you have, your Cornell email address will still be your NetID@cornell.edu (for example, ewe1@cornell.edu).
NOTE: This answer applies only to students who were enrolled at Cornell prior to April 2009. Students who enrolled starting in April 2009 or later do not have Cornell email (postoffice) accounts.
Once you activate your Cmail account, your Cornell email (postoffice) account will be discontinued in 35 days. Learn about your choices for moving email in your Cornell email (postoffice) account when you activate your Cmail account.
If you want to continue using your Cornell email (postoffice) account, do NOT activate your Cmail account. You will be able to use your Cornell email (postoffice) account for at least the 2009-10 academic year if you do not activate your Cmail account. If you make this choice, you will not be able to use any of the Cmail services.
Please know that all student postoffice accounts will be closed at some point after the 2009-10 academic year; the exact timing has not yet been determined.
No. Just like you can do now, you will be able to use Who I Am to route your Cornell email to the external email account of your choice. Cmail provides more services than just email, however, and you may want to use some of them.
Yes. Per Google restrictions, you cannot send or receive messages that are larger than 25 MB, or messages containing attachments that are executable files (such as files ending in .exe), even if they are sent in a zipped (.zip, .tar, .tgz, .taz, .z, .gz) format. Please note that the process of adding a file to a message increases its size (by adding encoding necessary for transmission), so if your file is almost 25 MB, you may get a "too big" error message.
You can use Cornell's DropBox to securely transfer files that cannot be sent through Gmail. The maximum file size is 1.5 GB.
Yes. Because Cmail services are hosted outside of Cornell's networks, using them counts toward the 15 GB of off-campus (Internet) traffic that each student is given each month. The usage of most students is far below that threshold each month, so the additional usage needed for Cmail services is expected to be covered.
Per the Network Usage-Based Billing (NUBB) policy, usage above 15 GB per month is billed at a fraction of a cent per megabyte.
Cornell Information Technologies will be monitoring the effects of Cmail usage on NUBB allocations to determine if an increase in the base monthly allocation is needed.
Cornell's commitment to student privacy is not changing as a consequence of offering Cmail (Google Apps) as email services.
As with all decisions that Cornell makes regarding information technologies, privacy and security are key elements.
In addition, Cornell remains committed to freedom of expression. The Office of University Counsel managed the contract negotiations with Google to ensure that Google meets the university's expectations for freedom of speech, privacy, and security.
The process used to select Google Apps included a review of Google's privacy and security practices. Google provided satisfactory responses to the university's detailed inquiries and requirements about those aspects of their respective services.
Among those areas of concern were requirements that the vendor would not have any rights to access user content stored in emails or files in personal web space, or contained as part of any productivity applications. Google agreed to Cornell's requirements in the context of its privacy policy.
For a partial comparison, see Cornell's email stewardship policy.
Google will not include the advertising that is usually seen on its publicly available Gmail service for the duration of a student's enrollment at Cornell.
Current students will have the option to continue with Cornell's email system for at least the 2009-10 academic year if they do not activate their Cmail account.
New undergraduate and graduate students, starting with those enrolling in summer 2009 programs or for the fall 2009 semester, will choose whether to use Cmail or some other email service when they activate their Cornell NetID.
All students will also continue to have the option to route their Cornell email address to the external email service of their choice.
Between the provisions that are part of our contract with Google, and the choices that students will have for email, we believe that all students will have the flexibility to manage their email in keeping with their personal needs and values.
Cmail includes Gmail and several other tools. While you can continue to use your own Gmail account if you like, it will be completely separate from your Cmail account.
Your own personal Gmail account will also include advertising. Your Cmail account will not have any advertising until you graduate.
Learn about using Cmail with other accounts.
Note: If you rely on labels to organize your messages, please look at the notes at the end of this answer about labels and filters, before you follow the steps to move your mail.
First, you need to update some settings in your personal Gmail account.
You're now done with your personal Gmail account settings. Next, you'll change the settings in your Cmail account.
Cmail will now use POP to download your email from your personal Gmail account. It will download 200 message blocks every 5 minutes, so it may take a while for it to complete the transfer.
About labels: Please note that Google doesn't transfer labels when it moves messages between accounts using this method. A fairly good workaround is to recreate your labels in your Cmail account and use filters to re-label your messages. Because Google only applies filters to incoming messages, you need to do this before you follow the steps to move your messages.
How to export/import filters: If you already have filters set up in your personal Gmail account and want to use them in your Cmail account, you can use an experimental Google tool to easily move your filters.
Sign in to your personal Gmail account, click the "Settings" link, then click the "Labs" link in the yellow bar. Scroll down to find the "Filter import/export" feature, and choose the Enable radio button. Click the "Save Changes" button near the top or bottom of the window.
Click the "Settings" link again, then click the "Filters" link in the yellow bar. Click the boxes next to the filters you want to export, then click the "Export" button. You will be prompted to save a file that contains your filters. Note its name and save the file to your computer or USB flash drive.
Sign in to your Cmail account, and follow the steps above to enable the "Filter import/export" feature. Then click the "Settings" link again, and click the "Filters" link in the yellow bar. Click the "Import filters" link. Follow the directions provided by Google.
Cornell recommends using Google's Mail Fetcher to do this.
NOTE: This answer applies only to students who were enrolled at Cornell prior to April 2009. Students who enrolled starting in April 2009 or later do not have Cornell email (postoffice) accounts.
As a current student who was enrolled prior to April 2009, when you choose to set up your Cmail account, you will have a one-time opportunity to have Cornell Information Technologies copy most email that is in your Cornell email (postoffice) account to Cmail. Please note, it may take up to three business days for all your messages to be copied.
Messages larger than 25 MB and messages that contain certain types of attachments cannot be copied because of Google-imposed limitations. For each message that is not copied, there will be a message from "Google Mail Migration" in your Cmail account listing the message's To, From, and Subject lines, and the reason why it was not copied.
If you want to keep these messages, you will need to use Cornell WebMail within 35 days to download them to your own computer or removable media (such as a USB flash drive).
After CIT finishes copying your email, you will be able to use Cornell WebMail for 35 days to make sure that your email was copied correctly. Thirty-five days after your email is copied, your Cornell email (postoffice) account will be discontinued and any email that was not copied will be deleted.
Important! Even if you don't take the one-time opportunity to have your email copied to Cmail, your Cornell email (postoffice) account will still be discontinued 35 days after you activate your Cmail account. If you want to save any email in your Cornell postoffice account, you will need to use Cornell WebMail to download it to your own computer or removeable media (such as a USB flash drive).
No, we cannot provide that service at this time, because it would require an individual customization for each user.
(Web address mapping refers to a suggestion that Google makes when you create a web site under the Sites section of Cmail. The default web address is something like https://sites.google.com/a/cornell.edu/whatever-you-chose/. Web address mapping, if it were available, would create a redirect address like https://whatever-you-chose.cornell.edu/.)
