One of the simpler ways to read incoming e-mail from the UIowa Microsoft Exchange server is using the Office 365 Web interface. Expand the steps below to access instructions and click on the small screen shots to see larger versions.
If you happen to be one of the privileged few who are allowed to use "Office365 legacy protocols" (ask me and I can check) and you want to configure Thunderbird, then see the otherwise unnecessary step 8 below. If you have any email folders on Mercury, see step 9 below.
0. Verify E-mail Routing
This is only necessary if you don't have a work phone in Van Allen Hall (for obscure reasons) and if your e-mail is not flowing through the UIowa Office365 system. (If in doubt, skip this unless I tell you to do step 0.)
Go to the self service page at:
https://apps.its.uiowa.edu/chgalias/update-email-target
Log in with your hawkid and password, then check that your e-mail is being forwarded to "Office 365 (hawkid@iowa.uiowa.edu)" as in the screen shot below. Be careful not to route it elsewhere or ITS will delete your Office 365 account. Hit "Update Email Routing Address" only if you change it.
1. Login to Office365
First, using a modern browser and your hawkid and password, login to https://office365.uiowa.edu/.
2. Select Outlook
Select the Outlook application (the "O" icon on the left). See the magenta pointer in the screen shot.
3. Select Settings
Select Outlook settings (the gear icon in the upper right). See the magenta pointer in the screen shot.
4. View All Outlook Settings
Click "View all Outlook settings" lower in the list. See the magenta pointer in the screen shot.
5. Select Forwarding
Click "Forwarding" lower in the list. See the magenta pointer in the screen shot.
6. Disable Forwarding
Uncheck the box next to "Enable forwarding". See the magenta pointer in the screen shot.
Alternatively, you can continue forwarding, but check the box next to "Keep a copy of forwarded messages".
By the way, if you simply want to forward your e-mail to another account instead, like gmail, then leave this box checked, enter your new e-mail address in the box, and exit the instructions here.
7. Learn How to Use Outlook
Exit out of the preceding setup. There's a "?" icon in the upper right that's supposed to provide help, but I personally find it entirely useless. I recommend using Google to search something like "office365 outlook show messages in time order".
8. But What about Thunderbird?
This is only for people who want to use Thunderbird. If you don't want to use Thunderbird, then ignore this. In addition, you must have successfully completed steps 0 through 7 above. Incoming e-mail must be arriving in your university Office365 Outlook inbox and your two-factor authentication must be operational.
Why might you want to try to configure Thunderbird? If you are successful at configuring Thunderbird to access the university Microsoft exchange server via IMAP protocol, then you will be able to continue to access your old e-mail folders on Mercury, you will be able to drag and drop e-mail between Office365 folders and Mercury folders, and you will be able to continue to use the Thunderbird interface you have become familiar with and can avoid learning to deal with the Microsoft Outlook user interface.
This will only work if you are lucky enough to be a member of the university Active Directory group 900051258(its-o365-legacy-protocols-enabled@iowa.uiowa.edu). If you don't know how to check this, ask me and I'll check for you.
Now you're ready to set up a new Thunderbird account for university Office365 email. Expand the headings below for instructions.
A. Set Up Another Account
Open Thunderbird and click on the account name just above your inbox in the left column. This should open a page like the one shown below. (Click on the image for a larger version if necessary.) Click "Email" under "Set Up Another Account".
B. Configure Manually
In the pop-up window, enter your name and your university email address. You MUST enter your HawkID password as well. Then click "Configure manually".
C. Set Up Your Existing Email Address
FOLLOW THESE DIRECTIONS CAREFULLY!
The following screen shot is the final state after following these directions carefully. Incoming and outgoing server configurations appear in two columns.
- Change incoming IMAP server name to "outlook.office365.com" with security "SSL/TLS".
- Change outgoing SMTP server name to "smtp.office365.com" with security "STARTTLS".
- The "Port" settings should update to the values shown automatically.
- Leave (or set) the "Authentication" at "Autodetect" initially for both. (The correct value may not be available in the drop-down menu yet.)
- BE SURE to enter your username as your hawkid@uiowa.edu, NOT YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS.
- Check all the previous steps again.
- Now hit "Re-test".
The same screen should update with a message indicating success.
- DO NOT click done yet!
- Next, you must change the authentication for both incoming and outgoing to "OAuth2" (which wasn't presented as an option before the "re-test").
- Double-check that your username is still hawkid@uiowa.edu and that it hasn't been switched back to your email address!
See the final settings in the following screen shot.
D. Click Done, then Finish
Finally, you can click "Done". At some point you will have to authenticate using your HawkID and password using a pop-up browser-like page showing the familiar University two-factor authentication page. For this authentication page, use your hawkid@uiowa.edu as the username and your university HawkID password. It will churn for a minute or so getting information and connecting the calendar, then you can click "Finish" and it should present you with an account page something like the following screen shot. Click the "Account Settings" gear icon in the upper right. You may want to change the the "Account Name" to UIowa or maybe Office365 to keep the heading simple.
There's a chance that even if you're a member of the appropriate Active Directory security group (mentioned earlier) that you still don't have IMAP protocols enabled within the Microsoft email server. If your HawkID login seems to work, but then you get a long message indicating that some services may not be allowed by your service provider and you don't have access to your inbox, let me know and I'll find an appropriate contact at ITS to fix things.
E. Don't Fill Up Your Local Disk
The option we're disabling here may actually be used to keep a local copy of email from Mercury, which may go away without much warning. See the item "9. What about Mercury Going Away?" below.
Select the "Synchronization & Storage" option in the left column and uncheck the "Keep messages in all folders for this account on this computer", otherwise Thunderbird will download all of your e-mail to the computer you're setting up, unnecessarily filling your hard drive.
Shut down and restart Thunderbird. If it didn't do the two-factor HawkID authentication before, it should do it now. If not, go back into the server settings and make sure that "OAuth2" authentication is selected for both.
F. Migrate Calendars
9. What about Mercury Going Away?
Currently, Mercury is offline. It may be resurrected in the future.
Anyone who accesses IMAP email folders on Mercury needs to plan to copy those in case of the sudden unexpected demise of Mercury. The Zimbra system on Mercury is no longer supportable and if it fails, it may take considerable time and effort to restore access to those email folders. This is one possible method of making a local copy of those email folders using Thunderbird. If you're not currently using Thunderbird to access IMAP email folders on Mercury, these instructions are not for you.
Note that you should implement this option only on a host system that has plenty of available storage, enough for all of your accumulated email. Feel free to do this on a personal system and/or one of the SPDR servers, but think twice about doing this on a notebook computer.
Expand and implement the following steps in Thunderbird on the selected system:
A. Account Settings
Click your account headding in the leftmost column, then select "Account Settings". (My screen capture widget places the pointer a bit above and to the right of where it's actually at. Adjust accordingly.)
B. Synchronization & Storage
Select "Synchronization & Storage".
C. Keep messages
Check the box for "Keep messages in all folders for this account on this computer".
D. Advanced
You may want to click the Advanced button which will allow you to verify each folder that will be copied into your local disk space.
E. Verify
Be sure that each email folder you want to copy locally is checked. You can close out the "Account Settings" tab after this.
NOTE
After completing the above steps, you must open each affected email folder one at a time to trigger the actual download. I recommend letting the download complete before continuing on with the next folder. If you're not adding to these folders, you're all set. However, if any of the folders change, they must be opened again on this system in order to update the local copy.
Don't delete your folders or their contents on Mercury or Thunderbird will also delete the local copy.