Table of Contents

• Email Forwarding and Redirection Disclaimer
• Inbox Rules
• Forward/Redirect Emails to Another Account
• Forward Emails as an Attachment
• Troubleshooting Mail Delivery After Setting Up Forwarding/Redirection
• Stop Redirecting Emails to Alternate Email Address

Email Forwarding and Redirection Disclaimer

Important Note: Faculty and staff can not redirect or auto-forward their Illinois email. Please see this article for more information: Privacy & Cybersecurity, Faculty and Staff Email Auto-forwarding Retirement FAQ

If you choose to forward your email, please be aware that you may encounter the following problems:

• You may not receive all forwarded mail at the desired account. Due to how Illinois handles spam control and email relay routing, messages redirected outside of Exchange may incorrectly be blocked as spam. Users who decide to forward their email should check their Illinois Exchange account frequently to avoid missing messages.
• You risk violating FERPA and other regulations.These laws protect student information or other confidential information from being disclosed to a third-party, which includes companies that provide email services.
• Your other account might be subject to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Illinois business records stored in a private email account may render the entire account subject to FOIA requests for searches for relevant documents.
• You may not receive voice mail. The campus Unified Communications system relies on functionality within your Exchange account to deliver voice mail.
• Technology Services cannot support problems that ensue from forwarding your email. Due to how email traffic flows into and out of the campus Exchange system, redirecting your email will result in your email being delivered to two separate locations. Official Illinois correspondence and email from any other Exchange user will be delivered to your official Illinois email account (Exchange) regardless of your forwarding settings. You are solely responsible for any consequences resulting from this change.

Exception: Graduates and Retirees

All students who graduated from Illinois after December 2012 are eligible for email forwarding for life from their Illinois email. For more information on your email account and leaving the university, see Identity Management, Leaving Campus for Graduating Students.

All people who retire from Illinois will maintain use of their Exchange mailbox, but will need to access it via the Outlook website or on a mobile device. For more information on retirement, see Identity Management, Leaving Campus for Faculty and Staff.

Inbox Rules

You can use inbox rules to automatically perform specific actions on email that arrives in your inbox. For example, you can create rules that will change the importance level of messages as they come in, automatically move them to other folders, or delete them based on certain criteria. For a full rundown of everything you can do with rules, please see Manage email messages by using rules in Outlook.

Forward/Redirect Emails to Another Account

While your Exchange mailbox still exists, forwarding and redirecting your email is a 2-step process. It is very important that you follow both steps so that all mail goes where intended. If your mailbox no longer exists or has been deactivated, skip step 2.

Step 1: Update your email address in the Electronic Directory Editor (EDE)

1. Navigate to the Electronic Directory Editor and log in.
2. Find the mail field and enter the email address you would like to have mail forwarded to.
3. To have mail delivered to your Illinois Outlook account, enter your email as YourNetID@mx.uillinois.edu
4. To have mail delivered to your Illinois Gmail account, enter your email as YourNetID@g.illinois.edu
5. To have mail delivered to your personal email, simply enter your personal email address
6. Click Apply to save your settings.

Step 2: Set up an inbox rule to forward emails

Instructions for setting up inbox rules will vary depending on the version of Outlook that you use:

• Outlook Online (recommended)
• Classic Outlook for Windows
• New Outlook for Windows

Instructions for New Outlook (MacOS):

1. With Outlook open, go to Message > Rules > Edit Rules....
2. Click Add new rule.
3. Enter a descriptive name for your rule. It can be anything you like, but it should be descriptive so you know what it does.
4. Under Select a condition, choose Apply to all messages.
5. Under Select an action, choose Redirect to.
6. Enter the email address you would like to forward the mail to. It must match what you entered in EDE.
7. Click Save.
8. If you have more than one inbox rule, use the arrow buttons to move this rule to the top.

Forwarding rule versus Redirection rule

Forwarding changes the Sender to be your Illinois email address so you can easily keep track of forwarded vs non-forwarded messages. Redirection sends all incoming email directly to your redirected email address while keeping the original Sender intact.

Forwarding Email Messages as an Attachment

A common reason to forward messages as an attachment is to report suspected phishing email. Forwarding as an attachment preserves helpful diagnostic information, which is lost when simply forwarding the email.

Outlook Online

1. Click the New mail button to create a new message.
2. Click and drag the message you want to forward as an attachemnt into the body of your new email.
3. Enter the other details of your message like normal (To, Subject, Body, etc.), then click Send.

Classic Outlook for Windows

1. Select the message you would like to forward.
2. Press Ctrl + Alt + F to open a new message window with the selected email as an attachment.
3. Enter the other details of your message like normal (To, Subject, Body, etc.), then click Send.

New Outlook for Windows

1. In the message list, select the message you wish to forward.
2. Click the drop down arrow underneath Forward on the Home tab.
3. Click Forward as attachment.
4. Enter the other details of your message like normal (To, Subject, Body, etc.), then click Send.

Outlook for Mac

1. Select the message you would like to forward.
2. Press Ctrl (^) + Command (⌘) + J to open a new message window with the selected email as an attachment.
3. Enter the other details of your message like normal (To, Subject, Body, etc.), then click Send.

Troubleshooting Mail Delivery After Setting Up Forwarding/Redirection

If you aren't receiving emails where you expect them to show up or not receiving emails at all, start by checking these settings.

EDE Mail Delivery

Log in to the Electronic Directory Editor (EDE) and look for the mailfield. It should be one of the following:

• YourNetID@mx.uillinois.edu
  • Emails will be delivered to your Microsoft account (Outlook)
• YourNetID@g.illinois.edu
  • Emails will be delivered to your Google Apps @ Illinois account (Gmail).
• A non-Illinois personal email address

Caveats

If external email is redirected away from the Illinois mail server (by setting this to anything besides @mx.uillinois.edu), Technology Services will not be able to track what happens to a message afterwards.

Current staff members are not able to edit their mail forwarding settings, and by default must use their @illinois.edu email address for conducting university business, rather than directing mail elsewhere. More information about this policy can be found here: Privacy & Cybersecurity, Faculty and Staff Email Auto-forwarding Retirement FAQ.

Google Apps @ Illinois is only provided as a service to current students, faculty, and staff; others should not use the @g.illinois.edu setting.

Changes to the EDE mail field may take up to 4 hours to sync with the mail server, and will not take effect immediately.

Inbox Rules

If messages are staying on the Illinois mail server (EDE mail field is @mx.uillinois.edu or @g.illinois.edu) but you are not finding them where you expect, check if you have any inbox rules or filtering set up. Inbox rules can be used to redirect or file away some messages, and may be catching mail you don't expect them to.

For Microsoft accounts, Outlook's rules can be found here:https://outlook.office.com/mail/options/mail/rules

For Google accounts, Gmail's filters can be found here:https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#settings/filters

Email software (such as the installed version of Outlook, Apple Mail, or smartphone applications) can also perform sorting, filtering, or redirection on its own, or its connection to the mail server may fall out of sync. Check the Outlook web app for missing messages or different contents to see if this is the case. If messages appear in the website but not in your email software, try removing the account from the software and adding it back.

Other potential causes

Spam

Missing emails may have inadvertently been flagged as spam.

• If you are missing mail from a specific person or vice versa, make sure you add them to your safe senders list. For instructions to add or remove people from your safe senders list, see Email, Spam Control, Managing Safe and Block Lists.
• If you have attachments on your message, ensure they are not being blocked: Email, Spam Control, Email or attachment disappears.

Messages that are marked as spam often end up in your Proofpoint Spam Digest. Also make sure to check your Deleted, Spam, Junk, etc. folders.

Preferred Address

If you are a student and you are having issues receiving course emails (e.g. from your instructors), please check that your preferred email address in Self-Service is correct. To check this:

• Students
  1. Navigate to the Student Services page, and sign in.
  2. Click Update Personal Information.
  3. Confirm your University Assigned Email Address (Preferred) is your NetID@illinois.edu email address.
  4. If your preferred email address is not your @illinois.edu email, please see Enterprise, University Assigned, Preferred Email Address.
• Staff/Faculty
  1. Navigate to the My Profile page and click Access My Profile.
  2. Confirm your University email is your NetID@illinois.edu email address
  3. If your preferred email address is not your @illinois.edu email, please see Enterprise, University Assigned, Preferred Email Address.

Still missing emails

If you're able to provide the Technology Services Help Desk with a specific example of an email that's gone missing, we may be able to track down whether or not the mail server saw it and what may have happened to it. Contact the Help Desk by email at consult@illinois.eduor by phone at 217-244-7000 and provide the following details:

• Timestamp the message was sent (or a date and a range of hours, if the exact time is not known).
• Sending address the message originated from.
• Recipient address the message was sent to.
• Subject of the message, if known.

Email still delivering to Exchange account

If you have only set up email forwarding in EDE but your Exchange mailbox still exists, any mail sent by another Illinois Exchange user will ignore any EDE forwarding rules. For example: Exchange user A composes an email in Exchange and uses the "check names" feature to send an email to user B. User B has an Exchange account and forwards all their mail to Gmail via EDE. The email from User A will be delivered to User B's Exchange account. In order for all mail to be delivered to the account in EDE, you will need to set up an inbox rule.

Stop Redirecting Emails to Alternate Email Address

Illinois accounts can be configured to redirect incoming emails to Microsoft Exchange, Google Apps, or a personal email address. This setting is found in the Electronic Directory Editor:

1. Navigate to the Electronic Directory Editor and log in.
2. Find the mail field and enter YourNetID@mx.uillinois.edu. It is important to use the @mx.uillinois.edu domain; if you use @illinois.edu, emails will not be delivered correctly.
3. Click Apply to save your settings.

Please note that changes made in EDE can take up to 4 hours to propagate to the email relays. Emails may not be delivered correctly until your settings have synced. More information about email forwarding and redirection using EDE can be found here:Email, How to set up email forwarding.

You will also need to delete any Inbox rules that are set to forward or redirect mail to another email address: Manage email messages by using rules in Outlook.

Staff members are not allowed to redirect email, and will be unable to edit the mail field in EDE. If you are a staff member and need to modify this to disable mail forwarding, please contact the Technology Services Help Desk by email at consult@illinois.edu or by phone at 217-244-7000. See this article for more information: Privacy & Cybersecurity, Faculty and Staff Email Auto-forwarding Retirement FAQ.