What is this switch? Until November 16, 2011, the University has maintained its own e-mail servers. To access the @umn.edu e-mail account, University members used GopherMail. The University Office of Information Technology then signed a contract where Google manages our e-mail servers.

How does this affect you? If you do not use your @umn.edu account, instead using your @physics.umn.edu account (or @astro.umn.edu), you will have to re-enable forwarding. Once this is done, there will be no differences between your current mail solution and the new Google mail.

Does my e-mail address change? No. If your e-mail account was JohnDoe@umn.edu while the University was using GopherMail, it will stay JohnDoe@umn.edu when you move to Google.

To which Google products do I have access? For that information, see the University's FAQ on Google Apps at the University

1. Prepare your umn account for forwarding.

2. Follow the directions in 'Signing Up for Google Apps'. If you do not this, it will be done automatically for all eligible people at the University!

3. Log in to your new University Gmail account: http://mail.umn.edu

4. Click the spoke icon at top-right of the page. A menu will appear, select “Mail Settings”

5. Select the “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” tab

6. Click the “Add a Forwarding Address” button

7. Enter your physics (or astro) email address and click “ok”

8. Your SPA email account will get an e-mail from Google about forwarding. Open your forwarding email account, and find the confirmation message from the Gmail team.

9. Click the verification link in that email.

10. Back in your Gmail account in the “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” tab, select the 'Forward a copy of incoming mail to…' option and select your forwarding address from the drop-down menu.

11. Select the action you'd like your messages to take from the drop-down menu. You can choose to keep Gmail's copy of the message in your inbox, or you can send it automatically to All Mail or Trash.

12. Click Save Changes.