Keep your Exchange account email messages when leaving IU

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Overview

In most cases, Exchange accounts are disabled after you leave Indiana University; see UITS computing account termination. If you want to retain access to your email messages, you have several options, all described here.

Note:
You may not save any email messages outside the Exchange server if they contain Critical data, including protected health information (PHI), or move them outside of your official IU email account.

Transfer your messages to another email account

When transferring messages between email accounts, UITS strongly recommends using Outlook, because you can add multiple email accounts to one profile, and then easily transfer messages from one mailbox to another; other mail clients sometimes encounter transfer issues.

These instructions are for transferring from Exchange to another email account, but also work well for transferring from another email account to Exchange by dragging and dropping messages as noted:

  1. Configure an email client to access Exchange account: Follow the appropriate instructions for adding your Exchange mailbox:
  2. Add the destination email account to Outlook: To add a non-IU email account (for example, Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo) to Outlook, follow the configuration instructions supplied by your email provider.
  3. Transfer messages: After adding both email accounts to Outlook, you can transfer messages by dragging them from your Exchange account and dropping them into the destination email account.

    When transferring messages, keep the following in mind:

    • UITS recommends using a wired connection to the internet instead of a wireless connection. Wired connections are more stable and have less data loss.
    • You might occasionally see the Windows hourglass or the Mac spinning beach ball signifying that your computer's memory is being taxed, or a variety of failure and "not responding" messages. These messages will usually disappear if you allow the process to continue to run.
    • Check all folders and subfolders, including your Sent folder, for messages you want to keep.
    • UITS highly recommends right-click dragging and dropping the messages, and selecting Copy (not Move), so that if there are any issues with the transfer, the messages will not be removed from Exchange, and the transfer can be reattempted.

Save your messages on your computer

You may choose to configure your mail account within Outlook so that it archives email into personal folders stored locally on your computer's hard drive. In this case, your mail will be saved as a single file on your computer yet will still be displayed in Outlook properly. Alternative mail clients and configuration methods are available depending on your operating system and email account; however, mail clients besides Outlook have more limited support for archiving.

For instructions using Outlook, see Export or backup email, contacts, and calendar to an Outlook .pst file.

If you use IU Exchange and want to configure Outlook to read your mail, follow either of the instructions below:

Note:
In addition to Outlook, a number of other email services have the ability to import .pst files, including Gmail (see G Suite Migration for Microsoft Outlook).

For help, contact your campus Support Center.

Redirect or forward your messages

Redirecting your email will deliver a copy of it to the specified email address, while keeping the original sender/recipients intact. The disadvantage of this method is that every message must be redirected individually. Outlook on the web can redirect only if an appropriate rule is configured ahead of time; graphical clients such as Outlook can resend messages but cannot redirect them.

Forwarding your email will send it to the specified address, and it will appear to originate from your IU account. This is not the ideal solution if it is important that the original sender be kept in the "From:" field. One advantage is that you can forward multiple messages at once, although they will be forwarded as a single email message with multiple attachments.

This is document barg in the Knowledge Base.
Last modified on 2023-10-12 11:56:25.