Table of Contents

  1. General overview of the migration process
  2. Help for Windows users
  3. Help for Mac users
    1. Connect Outlook 2016 to Exchange
    2. Connect Outlook 2016 to Mailserv
    3. Move your mail
      1. Drag & Drop
      2. With the Move button
  4. If you want to use Thunderbird, you must migrate to Gmail, since the ACCC has not enabled the Outlook IMAP or POP3 servers.
    1. Connect to Gmail
    2. Moving mail from Tigger/Mailserv to Gmail

Overview of the Migration Process

The ACCC plans to end Webmail and Mailserv (as well as any holdouts still using Tigger to receive their email). service this December 15th. If you are not either using a UIC GoogleApps/Gmail or a UIC Exchange account to receive your email then you must take action before December 15th.

You must do 2 things:

  1. Sign up for a new campus mail service either:
  2. Download copies of your mail stored on Mailserv

Most Mailserv users will have enough mail stored on the server that they will have to wait sometime for their mail client to download it all. You many need to leave your computer on overnight downloading your messages. Of course, if you already read your email with a desktop mail client like Microsoft Outlook, Thunderbird, or Apple's Mail.app you probably already have local copies of your mail stored on whatever computer you use to run that mail client.

Optionally, after downloading your old mail from Mailserv or Tigger, you may also upload your old email to your new mail service so that your old email will be available through the web-interface to the new service. Keep in mind before you start uploading your old mail to your new mail server, you should make sure your old mail server is not receiving new messages.. This will prevent you from having to migrate messages received during or after the time period you are uploading them to your new mail server. The ACCC has a tool to view/change your mail routing.

While it is easy and quick to begin uploading your mail, the upload process will likely take a long time to complete. If you copy all your mail at once, you will likely have to leave your computer on overnight for the copy to complete.

The ACCC's administrative head wants all the faculty and staff to sign up for the exchange service, but they have also stated that they will, at least for now, continue to allow faculty not covered by HIPPA regulations to use the UIC Gmail accounts.

Help for Windows Users

The ACCC provides good documentation for configuring Microsoft Outlook on Windows, which is the only client the officially supported desktop mail client for the service. If you are a Windows user, I recommend using Outlook to migrate your mail from Mailserv to Exchange.

Connect Microsoft Outlook to your old Mailserv account.

Connect Microsoft Outlook to your new Exchange account.

You may now drag and drop or copy & paste either individual emails or entire folders from one account to the other.

Help for Mac Users

  1. Connect Outlook 2016 to Exchange
  2. Connect Outlook 2016 to Mailserv
  3. Move your mail
    1. Drag & Drop
    2. With the Move button

Because I have only so much time on my hands, I will write instructions for Microsoft Outlook 2016 for MacOS. You may be able to migrate your mail using Apple's Mail.app as well, but as Outlook is the official client, that will be what I document and support.

Note: Microsoft Outlook 2016 does not run on the latest version of MacOS (10.13 "High Sierra") out-of-the box. At least, not the version distributed by the webstore to campus IT Professionals. You must run Microsoft's update utility first, which can be triggered by opening Microsoft Word or Excel, which do run MacOS 10.13 after a fresh install of Microsoft Office 2016.

Connect Microsoft Outlook 2016 to Exchange

  1. Open Microsoft Outlook 2016. Go to the global menu and select Tools > Accounts.
    screenshot
  2. Click the + sign and choose New Account.
    screenshot
  3. Enter your email address (netid@uic.edu) and click continue.
    screenshot
  4. Assuming your exchange account exists you will automatically be connected to Office 365.
    screenshot
  5. Next you will be prompted to sign in with your email and password. Make sure to use your full netid@uic.edu email address as your username.
    screenshot
  6. After you add the account, you may want to visit Tools > Accounts and change the text field Account description. This will default to "yournetid@uic.edu" but it may be useful to rename it to "yournetid@uic.edu (exchange)" so as to make it easy to identify which mail account is your exchange account if you are also adding your Mailserv or Tigger accounts.
    screenshot

Connect Microsoft Outlook 2016 to Mailserv

To archive or move your old emails on Mailserv you must also connect Outlook to Mailserv. Since the ACCC only provides instructions for connecting Outlook on Windows to Mailserv, I have written my own.

  1. Open Microsoft Outlook 2016. Go to the global menu and select Tools > Accounts.
    screenshot
  2. Click the + sign and choose New Account.
    screenshot
  3. Enter your email address (netid@uic.edu), but read the next step before you click continue.
    screenshot
  4. If you have already created an exchange online account, Outlook will want to automatically connect to it. To connect to your old Mailserv account you will have about 5 seconds to click Not Office 365? instead. If you do not click this link in time, you will have to quit the Add Account dialog and start over.
    screenshot
  5. If you succeeded in clicking Not Office 365? fast enough, you will be able to choose the account type. It's IMAP/POP.
    screenshot
  6. Now you need fill in the server settings. You should fill in the follow settings. Settings with * next to them (or a red arrow in the picture) have an incorrect default value:
    Type: IMAP
    Email Address: yournetid@uic.edu
    Username*: yournetid (not yournetid@uic.edu)
    Incoming Server*: mail.uic.edu
    Incoming Server Port: 993
    Use SSL to connected (recommended): checked
    Outgoing Server*: mail.uic.edu
    Outgoing Server Port*: 465
    Use SSL to connected (recommended): checked
    Type: IMAP
    Email Address: yournetid@uic.edu
    Username*: yournetid (not yournetid@uic.edu)
    Incoming Server*: mail.uic.edu
    Incoming Server Port: 993
    Use SSL to connected (recommended): checked
    Outgoing Server*: mail.uic.edu
    Outgoing Server Port*: 465
    Use SSL to connected (recommended): checked
    If you fill in this much information and hit the Re-test button, the rest of the settings should be automatically detected.
    screenshot
  7. You should now be done adding your account.
    screenshot
  8. After you add the account, you may want to visit Tools > Accounts and change the text field Account description. This will default to "yournetid@uic.edu" but it may be useful to rename it to "yournetid@uic.edu (Mailserv)" so as to make it easy to identify which mail account is your exchange account and which account is your Mailserv account.
    screenshot

Move your mail

>Move mail by drag and drop

  1. While you can directly move your mail into, e.g. your Exchange account Inbox, you may want to create a folder to hold messages as you move them into your exchange account. This will make it easier to verify that you have copied all your messages into your Exchange account. In this example, we create a folder named move-to-here by right clicking (control+click) on the exchange account and selecting the New Folder option in the context menu.
    screenshot
  2. Now click & hold (don't release the mouse or trackpad button) the Mailserv folder you want to move. Drag it to the destination folder you want to put the mail folder in. In this example, we move the Mailserv folder move-me into the Exchange folder move-to-here.
    screenshot
  3. After moving, there is a new move-me sub-folder of the exchange folder move-to-here. If your folder contains a lot of mail, it may take quite some time to finish coping. After copying, check that the count of items in the lower left corner of the exchange window is the same in your new folder on the exchange server as the old folder on Mailserv.
    screenshot

Move mail with the move button

It is also possible to select messages and move them using the move button in the ribbon interface.

  1. First select the messages you would like to move. The keyboard shortcut ⌘+a for "select all" may be useful. Next press the Move button in the ribbon interface. A menu will drop down, if you do not already see the folder you wish to move mail into, select other folder.
    screenshot
  2. Search by text string for the name of the folder you would like to move your mail into. As matching folders appear, you may select your desired destination folder.
    screenshot
  3. Moving mail using this method puts the messages directly into the target folder, instead of a subfolder of the target folder. (You can still see the subfolder from the previous example as well, though, because I did not delete it before taking the screenshots for the second example). As in the previous example, you should check, after moving, that the items count in the lower left corner of the Outlook window is the same in the destination folder as the source folder.
    screenshot

Help for Thunderbird Users

  1. Connect to Gmail
  2. Moving mail from Tigger/Mailserv to Gmail
    1. Identify your accounts
    2. Move your mail

It turns out the ACCC has not enabled the IMAP service functionality in Exchange and you cannot, therefore, connect clients like Thunderbird that do not support Microsoft's proprietary client/server protocol. If you are a Linux user and you want to use the campus Exchange service, then your best bet to migrate your mail would be to use the Evolution mail client which has reverse-engineered support for Microsoft's proprietary mail protocols. If you are happy Thunderbird user on any platform and want to continue using Thunderbird, I would recommend you migrate to Gmail instead, since Gmail does support IMAP or POP3 connections.

The ACCC provides basic instructions for connecting an IMAP client (such as Thunderbird) to UIC GoogleApps. There is an important omission in these instructions as of the time this how-to was written:

The proper authentication type to use to connect to Gmail is "OAuth2". As long as you use "OAuth2" authentication it is not necessary to "enable less secure applications".

Since the ACCC instructions are incomplete and fairly generic I will provide more detailed instructions below.

Important Note: Make sure thunderbird is updated to the latest version before you to m attempt to move your mail. Out-of-date versions of Thunderbird will not be able to connect to Gmail. You may need to update multiple times if your Thunderbird is sufficiently out of date. If you use a truly ancient version of Thunderbird, you will have to manually install the latest version of Thunderbird.

Important Note: Make sure you log into the Gmail web interface at least once before you begin migrating your mail.

  1. Open the Account Settings, one path to this menu is ☰ > Preferences > Accounts Settings.
    thunderbird screenshot
  2. Click the Account Actions button and select Add Mail Account.. from the drop-down menu.
    thunderbirdscreenshot
  3. In the pop-up window type in your name (as you would like it to appear to people you send email to from Thunderbird) and your Email address (netid@uic.edu). Click Continue. (It does not matter if you put your correct password in or not, you will have to override the password setting later anyway)
    thunderbird screenshot
  4. Thunderbird will try to auto-detect the proper configuration settings and fail. (This is normal) You must manually specify the following information:
    Incoming Server hostname: imap.gmail.com
    Email Address: yournetid@uic.edu
    Outgoing Server hostname: smtp.gmail.com
    Incoming Port: 993
    Outgoing Port: 465
    Username (incoming & Outgoing): netid@uic.edu (not just the default netid without @uic.edu)

    thunderbird screenshot
  5. Advanced Config should no longer be grayed-out. Click it.
    thunderbird screenshot
  6. This should open up the Account Settings menu with the Server Settings for the account you've just added open. If not, select the account (it is probably called something like your-netid@uic.edu or, if you already used this name for your Mailserv/Tigger account you something like your-netid@uic.edu-1). Under this account choose Server Settings. Change the Authentication method from Normal Password to OAuth2.
    thunderbird screenshot
  7. At this point in time Thunderbird may complain that "an account already exists with that name" and take you to the Account Name configuration dialog. Change the value of Account Name from your-netid@uic.edu to something like your-netid@uic.edu Gmail. This setting effects only what name Thunderbird use to display the account, not your actual email address.
    thunderbird screenshot
  8. You need to make the same change for the outgoing server. Select the Outgoing Server option in the left-panel of Account Settings. Select the account that includes smtp.gmail.com in its description. Then press Edit.
    thunderbird screenshot
  9. Change the Authentication method from Normal Password to OAuth2.
    thunderbird screenshot
  10. Press OK buttons until you leave the Account Settings and return to the main Thunderbird window. When you click the Inbox for the account you just added a window will pop up with the standard bluestem login screen. Enter your username and password.
    thunderbird screenshot
  11. After you authenticate you will be asked what account (choose the account associated with your-netid@uic.edu if there's more than one choice) you'd like to allow Thunderbird to access. Then you will be asked if you want to allow Thunderbird to read/send mail, which you should again allow. Now you are finished connecting Thunderbird to Gmail as an IMAP client.

Moving mail in Thunderbird

By default, Thunderbird downloads copies of all your messages on any incoming Mail server it's connected to. Thus, when Mailserv/Tigger are turned off you will still be able to open Thunderbird and read your old messages there. However, there are shortcomings to keeping your old email only in Thunderbird:

  • You must have access to Thunderbird to read your mail. You cannot, e.g. use a computer at the UIC library read any of your mail sent from before you migrated to Gmail.
  • If you get a new computer, you will have to copy your Thunderbird profile to the new computer to move your mail to the new machine. This is an operation I would describe as being of "intermediate difficulty".

To address the shortcomings above, you may want to upload mail from your old Mailserv/Tigger account into Gmail. Then you will be able to get at all your email through the Gmail web interface which will run on pretty much any computer anywhere ... except maybe China or Iran.

Identify Your Accounts

Before you start moving any mail, make sure you know which account is which. Since your email address for both accounts is the same, you have to avoid any potential confusion. I suggest name your accounts something like:

  • your-netid@uic.edu Gmail
  • your-netid@uic.edu Mailserv

to avoid confusion.

To identify which account is which open up the account settings. One path to this menu is ☰ > Preferences > Accounts Settings.
thunderbird screenshot

Under each incoming account check the setting Server Settings and look at Server Name. You can tell which accounts is which by consulting this table:

Account Server Name
Gmail imap.gmail.com
Mailserv/Tigger mail.uic.edu

thunderbird screenshot

If you click the account name of the account you are inspecting Server Settings for, you can set the Account Name to something like your-netid@uic.edu Gmail or your-netid@uic.edu Mailserv to help you easily identify which account is which in Thunderbird.
thunderbird screenshot

Move Mail

I recommend moving your mail one folder at a time. I think it makes it easier to check that all of your mail has successfully been copied between the two IMAP servers.

To completely move a folder that contains a lot of messages might take a long time. Before you start moving your mail, I recommend you wait for Thunderbird to finish downloading all of your mail from Mailserv/Tigger. I also recommend first changing your mail routing to Gmail so that more mail doesn't arrive in your Mailserv/Tigger mailbox while you are copying your folders to Gmail's IMAP server.

In the following example we will move the Mailserv folder move-me (and the messages it contains) into the Gmail folder mail-from-mailserv.

  1. First create the folder you want to move mail to under your Gmail account. Right click (or "control click" on MacOS) the Gmail account. From the drop down menu select New Folder.
    thunderbird screenshot
  2. Name the folder something. In this example we name the destination folder mail-from-mailserv.
    thunderbird screenshot
  3. Before we move the mail it's good to check the total number of messages in the source folder. Select the source folder by clicking on it. If you look near the bottom right corner of the Thunderbird window you can see a list of how many messages are in the currently selected folder. Make a note of how many messages (Total count) are in the source folder.
    thunderbird screenshot
  4. Click on the folder move-me and hold the mouse button down (don't release).
    thunderbird screenshot
  5. Drag the folder move-me above the folder you want to put it in. When you have the folder in the proper location, the destination folder will be highlighted. Release the mouse button now.
    thunderbird screenshot
  6. The folder move-me is now a sub-folder of mail-from-mailserv.
    thunderbird screenshot
  7. You may have to wait sometime for folders containing lots of messages to finish copying. After the Thunderbird finishes copying messages check that the total messages in the destination folder is the same as in the source folder.
    thunderbird screenshot
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