General Information

Users, with a valid online identity, can send and receive E-mail through RMail (Ryerson's email system). You can exchange mail both within the Ryerson campus as well as with any valid E-mail account on the Internet. A group of UNIX servers run Ryerson's system, which uses open Internet E-mail standards. To use the system you need a valid account and must obey Ryerson Student Computing Guidelines. Please see How to Activate Your Online Identity. While there are other special purpose systems, department mail systems and servers on campus, this guide only describes E-mail on the central system.

Users can read and send E-mail through the mail system from all the central labs and most networked computers in the University using Webmail.

Accessing E-Mail Off Campus

There are two ways to send and receive E-mail through the mail system from outside of the computer labs. Use a client program running on a PC or workstation such as Mozilla Thunderbird, or a web browser such as Mozilla Firefox or Windows Internet Explorer. These programs work with the mail server in the following ways:

• You can read mail received and stored in your account.
• You can compose and send E-mail messages through the mail server.
• Unless you explicitly delete E-mail messages, they remain on the mail server and can be read and re-read.
• You can send and receive additional files attached to E-mail messages. These files are called attachments. When Webmail cannot display or work directly with these attachments, such as spreadsheet, image, or program file(s), the files will be opened directly into software than can read the files. The PC you use to send and receive attachments must have applicable software.

An increasingly popular way to connect from home is to use your web browser to access Ryerson's Webmail or any of the E-mail client programs that understand Internet mail system protocols including SMTP, POP3, and IMAP. Use these programs to connect through an ISP. While this guide provides some basic information on using a number of these E-mail clients to connect to Ryerson, Academic Computing does not provide assistance for their use from home at this time. If you use them, please do so with some care. In particular, if you use the Thunderbird, MS Outlook, Eudora or other clients from home, be sure you understand how to connect to Ryerson. If your software uses POP3 to access your E-mail, your mail files may (depending on how your software is configured) be removed from the mail server when you connect. The messages may be automatically downloaded onto your workstation where they are your responsibility to maintain. If you are using an Internet Service Provider (ISP) to connect to Ryerson email or other resources from home, and you experience problems, please call your ISP help desk. The Academic Computing help desk in KHW71 will not be able to assist you.

User Responsibility

Please note that you must regularly monitor your E-mail account. Every account has a quota that controls how much mail can be stored. If you allow mail to build up beyond your quota, the mail system will start rejecting additional mail anyone sends to you. To avoid this, check your mail regularly and delete any mail you no longer need. Mail you want to keep but that does not have to reside on the mail system can be moved to disk.

Post-Graduation Status

Like all computing accounts at Ryerson, your E-mail account does not last forever. All part-time degree and full-time students may use their E-mail account during any term they are registered in courses at Ryerson. Full- and part-time degree students have access to their E-mail accounts for 17 months after their last registration. Continuing Education (CE) and Distance Education students are now also assigned E-mail accounts when registered at Ryerson. If you have a valid academic reason for extended access, please ask your professor to request this directly from Computing and Communications Services. Your professor will have to write CCS requesting this and must include your full name, my.ryerson user name, student number, a brief description of the academic work you are doing and why it requires continued use of your account.

Ryerson computing resources are provided to support academic advancement at the University. If you need an E-mail account for significant non-academic reasons such as running a business or need an account that does not disappear during a time when you are not registered at Ryerson, you should purchase one from an Internet Service Provider (ISP).