Students are expected to receive and respond in a timely fashion to electronic mail (email) sent to
YOURUSERID@uwaterloo.ca
That is the
official UW email address used by instructors and course staff.
The @uwaterloo.ca address will redirect
to any email address you set in
WatIAM.
WARNING:
If your student.cs computing account was created
before September 2009,
then it may be forwarding e-mail to a destination
other than your @uwaterloo.ca address.
That means that changing your @uwaterloo.ca address won't affect
mail sent directly to YOURUSERID@student.cs.uwaterloo.ca.
That can be changed by creating a file called ".forward"
in your home directory on the student.cs environment, containing:
YOURUSERID@uwaterloo.ca
If your student.cs computing account was created during or after
September 2009, the above setup was done when your account was created.
The Mywaterloo webmail client can be used to do effectively the same thing. Once this is done, the only place you'll need to specify where you read mail is WatIAM.
Students are encouraged to use the central student mail server
(mailservices.uwaterloo.ca)
provided by IST.
Instructions for setting up a mailservices account are available on the
MailServices web site.
Some students choose to use a non-uwaterloo.ca email service for all their email, including official communications to and from the university.
In these cases, it is the responsibility of the student to ensure mail forwarding to the external account works correctly, and that the student's identity is clear when communicating via electronic means (e.g. provide your WatIAM userid in email and newsgroups, so instructors can identify you correctly).
It is especially important for people using an off-campus mail service to set mail forwarding in WatIAM to their external email account, to ensure all official communications reach them.
There are numerous email client software programs available for the Linux, Macintosh and Windows environments. To access your Waterloo student mailbox from these environments or from off-campus, configure your mail client as follows: