E-Mail at Rutgers

Registering your e-mail address

You don't have to use a Rutgers system for mail, although we recommend it. But whether you use Rutgers, AOL, or some other ISP, please make sure that you register your e-mail address with the University. An increasing number of University offices are using e-mail to communicate with and deliver services to students, faculty and staff.

To check whether you are properly registered, please look yourself up in the Rutgers Online Directory.

To register or change your e-mail address update your directory information.

Reading and sending e-mail

Here are the major ways to read e-mail at Rutgers:

Web Mail: The easiest way to read and send mail is using Rutgers web mail. Anyone who has created a computer account on one of the OIT campus systems (eden, rci, pegasus, andromeda, clam or crab) can use web mail. You will login with your username/NetID and password from the campus system. To create an account see the account creation web page.

Standard Mail Programs: Web mail is fine for people who don't get much e-mail. For those who handle larger amounts of mail, or who want a mail reader with more features, we recommend using a mail program. Currently we support Netscape, Outlook Express and the full Outlook product. You may also want to consider Mozilla Thunderbird. It is currently in testing, but will probably replace Netscape over time.

While these are faster than web mail, they require you to do a small amount of work to set them up on your computer. You can use these mail programs together with web mail: They all use the same usernames/NetIDs and passwords, and they will all see exactly the same mail. Documentation:

• Newark and New Brunswick: Netscape E-Mail, Outlook, and Outlook Express. Newark students should use pegasus.rutgers.edu and Newark faculty/staff andromeda.rutgers.edu where this documentation mentions the New Brunswick systems eden.rutgers.edu and rci.rutgers.edu. Mozilla and Mozilla Thunderbird use the same instructions as Netscape 7.
• Camden: See the Netscape mail document from the Camden help pages for Windows, Macintosh, or Unix.
[The instructions for Netscape are for 4.7. See E-Mail in Netscape 6 for Netscape versions 6.x, 7.x, and Mozilla.]

Other Mail Programs: While Netscape and Outlook Express are the most common mail programs, you can actually use any mail program that supports "IMAP." IMAP is an industry-standard method for accessing mail on a server. While we can't supply specific instructions for all possible mail programs, the instructions for Netscape and Outlook Express will give you the information you need in setting up other mail programs. If you want to buy a separate mail program, Mulberry provides the most complete support for the features of IMAP. It works with Windows, Mac, Linux and Solaris.

Unix Command Line: People who prefer to use traditional Unix/Linux software may want to try pine. This is primarily a Unix screen-based program, although there is also a PC version of Pine available. If you have a computer account on one of the OIT campus systems, you can run pine on your campus Unix system. To do so, you will need to connect to the Unix system using SSH and login with your username/NetID and password. Documentation:

• Newark and New Brunswick: pine, SSH. (For Pine, Newark users should use the "short introduction" for RCI.)
• Camden: Unix.

Other Mail-related Services

Mailing lists

There are several kinds of mailing lists discussed in the following paragraphs:

• A list defined in your address book
• A list you maintain using a Rutgers list server
• Official University lists, covering all students in a college or school, and faculty or staff by mail code

NOTE: If you are going to send mail to more than 50 people, please see the e-mail guidelines in the computing policy web page

Address books. There are a number of ways to create mailing lists for e-mail use. If you are the only person that is going to use the list, and it is small (under 50 people), you can use the address book feature of your mail program. Netscape, Internet Explorer, and pine all call it the "address book". Other Unix mail programs use a file called .mailrc in your home directory.

Address book entries are easy to use, because you can create and modify them yourself. However they have two major problems: (1) they are private; (2) they are not appropriate for larger lists.

Suppose you want to maintain a list of staff in your department. If you enter their addresses in your address book, you will be able to send mail to all of them. However no one else in the department will be able to use the list, because it's in your private address book.

Mail list services. For this reason, most official lists are done using special mailing list software. Once a list is created, you can send mail to it just as if it were a normal user. For example, you might send e-mail to all faculty in the web science department by sending e-mail to websci_faculty@email.rutgers.edu.

Newark and Camden users can set up mailing lists by contacting the help desk on your campus. New Brunswick users should see the NB Mailman mailing list system. This web reference covers all aspects of the Mailman system, including requesting new lists and maintaining existing lists (i.e. adding and deleting members and changing parameters).

Official University lists. Computing services maintains a set of mailing lists that cover all students, as well as most faculty and staff. Currently the student lists classify students by college or school, and by class year. Faculty-staff lists are based on a set of mail codes based on the administrative hierarchy of the University. These lists are generated automatically from administrative data. Mail sent to the lists is redirected to a list manager, who will review it for appropriateness and may combine it with other information into periodic digests.

The official lists use the Mailman system. Information about the publicly available lists can be found on our Public Lists Webpage. From this page you can add or remove yourself from a list, and make other changes, by clicking on the appropriate link for the list. However there's a limitation: The official mailing lists are built automatically, based on the student records database and the payroll database. If you are put on the list automatically, you can't leave it. If you join the list voluntarily, you can undo that. For example, suppose you are a student in Rutgers College. You will automatically be on one of the Rutgers College lists (e.g. RUTGERS_JUNIOR) and the New Brunswick Official Student Mailman List (NB_ALLSTUDENTS). You can't leave those lists. However if you want to see information about Cook College, you can join a list such as COOK_JUNIOR. If you join that list yourself, you can later remove yourself from it.

Other e-mail services

Help in setting up departmental systems. OIT can give you help in planning and setting up a departmental mail system. Newark and Camden users should contact the help desk on your campus. New Brunswick users should contact the Microcomputer Support Services Group.

Course e-mail. Sometimes faculty are interested in an e-mail system that is limited to students in a specific course. This is available through WebCT, Web Course Tools. E-Mail within WebCT is very easy to use, as long as students can use a web browser. However it is limited to students within your course.

Please direct all questions regarding NBCS services to help@nbcs.rutgers.edu
Please direct all questions regarding this website to webmaster@nbcs.rutgers.edu
Last updated: June 4, 2007, 3:21 pm

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