Cornell Email | User Guide by IT Cornell

15 Feb 2020, by: Eric Joan

Cornell G Suite for Students

Cornell G Suite for Students ( Google's G Suite for Education ) is Cornell's email, calendar, and collaboration service for students and alumni. It was previously known as Cmail (only the name has changed). Alumni who graduated in 2009 or later received G Suite accounts that remain valid. Alumni from earlier years can request a G Suite account by sending an email to the IT Service Desk at itservicedesk@cornell.edu.

See Google's G Suite Learning Center for a quick overview of features. The Seven Easy Steps and Learn by Product links near the top of the page are particularly useful.

G Suite's features include:

Gmail - unlimited storage, built-in instant messaging including voice and video chat, mobile access, spam and virus protection
Google Calendar - multiple calendars and room/resource scheduling NOT integrated with Cornell rooms and resources
Google Docs - word processing, spreadsheets, forms, and presentations, with unlimited storage
Google Drive - file storage and sharing, with unlimited storage
Google Sites - website creation with videos, images, gadgets, and documents integration

G Suite accounts are provided automatically to all students (including undergraduates, graduate students, and professional students). To use your G Suite account, you simply need to activate your Cornell NetID.

The IT Security Office strongly recommends that you turn on Google's 2-Step Verification for your G Suite account. (This is not the same as Cornell's Two-Step Login.) After you activate your NetID, you will be able to use your NetID and password to sign in to your G Suite account.

Your email address is your NetID@cornell.edu address (for example, pqs665@cornell.edu).

Support

The IT Service Desk provides full support for G Suite's email service (Gmail) and calendar service. For all other G Suite services, support is best effort.

Alumni email services

Cornell G Suite (formerly known as Cmail) is the recommended email service available to all alumni. It is a Cornell-branded email account provided by Google Apps for Education. Students who had a Cornell G Suite account when they graduated and alumni can continue to use it for as long as Google offers this service for Cornell.

Email for Faculty and Staff

Office 365 is the university's email system for faculty and staff. It is a cloud-based service from Microsoft that manages email, calendars, task lists, and address books.

Undergraduates and alumni use G Suite for Students, formerly known as Cmail.

Features of Your Office 365 Account

Mailbox size: 50 GB for alumni and students; 100 GB for faculty, staff, and all others.

Email software: Outlook or Outlook on the web recommended. See our Choose an Email Client article.

Mobile devices: works with Android, iPhone, Windows Phone, and other devices that support ActiveSync. See how to get connected with your iOS device or how to get connected with your Android or other device.

Outlook on the web: outlook.cornell.edu

Deleted Items retention: Messages remain in your Deleted Items folder for 30 days and are then automatically deleted. (Explanation: When you click Delete on a message, or when you respond to a calendar invitation, it is automatically placed in your Deleted Items folder. Thirty days later, the message will be removed from your Deleted Items folder. If you're likely to want the message longer than 30 days, you should keep it in your Inbox or another folder instead of clicking Delete.) Message size limit: 25 MB (total size including attachments).

If you need to send files larger than 25 MB, use Cornell Box (cloud storage that you can share) or Cornell Secure File Transfer instead (for sizes up to 5 GB).

Maximum number of attachments on a single message: 250

Limits on Sending Very Large Mailings

Office 365 includes some security defenses that limit the ability of an individual to send huge numbers of messages in a short amount of time. If you have legitimate large mailings to do, please understand these limits and the alternatives you have for delivering your messages.

Maximum number of addresses allowed in the To:, Cc:, and Bcc: fields (combined): 500 per message

Maximum number of messages that can be sent from your email client per minute: 30

Maximum number of recipients who can receive messages sent from your account (or a Resource Account) in a 24-hour period: 10,000 (and no more than 5,000 can be to external addresses (that is, addresses other than @cornell.edu).

Notes

The 24-hour period is a rolling window: for example, if you send messages to 2,000 recipients at 8:30 am, then messages to 5,000 recipients at 12 noon, then messages to 2,000 recipients at 2:30 pm, and messages to 1,000 recipients at 4 pm, you won't be able to send any more messages until 8:30 am the next day. If you try to send a message after exceeding the limit, you will either see an immediate error about the recipient limit, or the message will be returned to you with an error. Save the message to your Drafts folder and try again later. A message will only be delivered if it can be delivered to all the recipients without going over the 10,000-limit. For example, if you've already sent messages to 9,900 recipients, and you attempt to send one message to 150 recipients, it will not be delivered because it would be 50 recipients over your limit for the 24-hour period. Alternatives for Very Large Mailings

Create and use one or more e-lists: a good choice if you'll email these same individuals many times and they're not all at Cornell.

Request and use a CornellAD mail-enabled group: a good choice if these individuals are all at Cornell and you'll email these same individuals many times (a mail-enabled CornellAD group is only counted as one recipient).

Use bulkmail: a good choice if this is the only time you'll email this particular group of individuals.

Third-party senders: Thinking about using an external vendor to distribute official Cornell messages? Please read our article about using third-party senders.

A Few Additional Account Limits

Maximum messages per folder: 1,000,000

Maximum subfolders per folder: 1000

Maximum folder hierarchy depth: 300

Maximum subject length: 255 characters

Maximum number of attachments to one message: 250

Service Details

Email for Faculty and Staff

Office 365, a cloud-based service from Microsoft, provides email and calendar services for faculty, staff, retirees, graduate and professional students, and student employees. (Undergraduate students and alumni use G Suite for Students, formerly known as Cmail.)

Audience(s):

Faculty IT Professionals Staff

Cost:

No Fee

Regulated Data:

Not applicable or information not available.

Support Contact:

IT Service Desk

Phone: (607) 255-5500

Email: itservicedesk@cornell.edu

Normal Business Hours: Monday-Friday, 8am-6pm (Eastern Time)

Emergency Service Disruptions: After Hours Support

Set Your Email Delivery Options

Faculty, staff, students, alumni, and retirees can have email addressed to their Cornell address delivered or forwarded in a number of ways.

This part applies to: Alumni and Visitors, Cornell G Suite for Students, Email for Faculty and Staff

In this part:

Overview

Will Messages to Me Be Delivered?

Are Messages Delivered to Me Secure?

Set Your Email Delivery Options

Overview

Faculty, staff, graduate and professional students, and retirees are given Office 365 (Exchange) email accounts. By default, you access these accounts through an email client like Outlook, Apple Mail, or Outlook on the Web.

Undergraduates and alumni are given G Suite email accounts (this service was previously known as Cmail).

You also have the option of forwarding your messages to an external (non-Cornell) address. Cornell discourages you from doing this for a variety of reasons that will be explained in this article.

Regardless of where you want your mail delivered, tell people to use your NetID@cornell.edu address.

Will Messages to Me Be Delivered?

Major email services continuously change how they send and receive messages in order to close loopholes that are being exploited for criminal purposes. Because of these changes, if you set your Cornell email to be automatically forwarded to an account on a non-Cornell service, your Cornell email may unexpectedly:

Be refused by that email service (not delivered to your account)

Be flagged as "junk" or suspicious

Be quarantined

Are Messages Delivered to Me Secure?

Cornell has contracts with Microsoft and Google that provide security and privacy for your Cornell email. Non-Cornell email accounts do not offer the same security or privacy that your Cornell account does.

Faculty and staff are urged to refrain from forwarding their Cornell email to a non-Cornell account if what they communicate about is:

subject to the university's record retention policy, or subject to other legal or university policy requirements related to institutional access, confidentiality, or recordkeeping, or academic or business information typically maintained by Cornell, for example, official course-related communications Never use ANY email account, Cornell-provided or otherwise, to transfer confidential data, such as financial information, Social Security numbers, credit-card numbers, employment records, or grades. Cornell Secure File Transfer is a university-approved, secure way to transfer confidential data.

Set Your Email Delivery Options

Before you decide to forward your Cornell email to a non-Cornell account, please be aware of policy changes by the major email service providers that may affect your email delivery.

The current best recommendation for everyone with Cornell email is to use their @cornell.edu account to send and receive mail.

Faculty, Staff, and Retiree Delivery Options

Undergraduate Student Delivery Options

Graduate and Professional Student Delivery Options

Alumni Delivery Options

Postdocs are employees, so the staff options apply. When a postdoc leaves, the situation can be more complicated. See our More About Former Postdoc Email article.