Information for Graduating Seniors

Congratulations to the Class of 2009! As you start to make the transition from Macalester students to Macalester alumni, here is some information about your Mac e-mail, stored files and voicemail. Your Macalester accounts will be closed as of Tuesday, September 1 2009. If you have e-mail in your Macalester Google Apps acount or files stored in your personal folder that you want to save, make sure you retriveve them before this date.

E-mail

In order to migrate and/or forward your Macalester e-mail, you will need another e-mail account with another provider. Many free options still exist, including Google's GMail and Yahoo Mail. If you will be attending graduate or professional school, that institution will likely provide you with a new account, and so will most corporate or nonprofit employers. Once you've set up your new e-mail account, you can forward new incoming Macalester mail to it until September 1. (We recommend that you set up an e-mail forwarding address before your Macalester e-mail account is closed. You can do this in Google Apps under the 'Settings' menu, using the 'Forwarding and POP/IMAP' options. Setting up a forwarding address will not move e-mail that you've already received.)

Macalester's Alumni Relations Office offers the 'MacDirect' service to all graduates at no charge. This service offers you lifetime e-mail forwarding using an "@alumni.macalester.edu" address. Get more information and sign up at www.macalester.edu/alumni/macdirect/index.html.

If you want to move your mail out of Google Apps and into a GMail account, Google recommends using the Mail Fetcher tool to migrate your mail.

When setting up the Mail Fetcher, you will be asked to provide the server information for Macalester. In the Add a mail account you own window, pull down the menu next to Pop Server: and select Other. Type in pop.gmail.com and select 995 from the Port pull-down menu. Also, be sure to check the box next to Always use a secure connection (SSL) when retrieving mail.

Please remember that you must have POP email access enabled before Mail Fetcher will work. To allow POP access, log into your Macalester email account and click the Settings link in the upper right corner. Next click the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab. In the POP Download: section be sure to click the radio button next to Enable POP for all mail.

Read about the Mail Fetcher here:

mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=21288

If you want to copy your mail to your computer's hard drive, we recommend using a program like Mozilla's Thunderbird (http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/). Thunderbird can be configured easily using IMAP or POP to save your messages locally. Configuration instructions for most e-mail clients may be found on Google's Web pages (http://mail.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?hl=en&topic=12806). All of the configuration instructions are accurate. The only Macalester-specific information you'll need is your e-mail account information, in the format below:

E-mail address: [your username]@macalester.edu
Username: [your username]
Password: your Macalester e-mail password

Voice Mail

A few Macalester students have activated, and use, their College-provided voice mailboxes. If you never activated your Macalester voice mailbox, ignore this message. Starting Monday, May 18 2009, students remaining on campus for the summer will have their voice mailboxes relocated to their new rooms. All other student voice mailboxes will be removed from service and all contents deleted as of May 18. If you would like your voice mailbox to stay active beyond that date, please contact Telecommunications at x6566 (or e-mail borke@macalester.edu) with your name, extension, and voice mailbox number.

Stored Files and Web Pages

All students have personal, shared and common storage directories on the Academic server - the H:, G: and M: drives, respectively. Any files you wish to retain should be copied down off the server, whether to a flash drive, external hard drive, moved to your laptop's hard drive, burned to CD, etc. The same is true for any Web-ready content you may have in your public.www folder, also on Academic. Your access to these files will be closed on Tuesday, September 1 2009.

Help Is Available

If you have questions or need assistance with any of the topics covered here, please call the ITS Help Desk at x.6525 or send e-mail to helpdesk@macalester.edu.

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