FAQ Mail (General questions)

You need a program to send, read, and manage your emails. We have put together a few of the most common email clients.

Outlook Express
On every Windows computer for free. It’s sufficient if you don’t want to install anything.

Mozilla Thunderbird
Free open source email client for all standard operating systems and much higher-performing Outlook Express. Get the newest Thunderbird version here: www.mozilla.com

Outlook
Fee-based groupware tool with Windows. Makes sense if you want to manage contacts, appointments, tasks and notes and not just email and/or if you want to synchronize your data with a PDA, cell phone, or iPod.

Webmail
University email client with web interface. Practical because you don’t need to install anything and can work from anywhere. Also a solution for on the go in addition to the email client installed at your work station.

When it comes to this question, tempers heat up. For good reasons, programmers wish html emails would be completely forbidden. Designers, on the other hand, wouldn’t want to go without the additional possibilities html offers.

First the facts:

In short:

If you need formatting features for necessary structure because the Corporate Design requires it or because you want professionally designed emails, then you can’t get around HTML. 

If you don’t need those features, then use text emails.

In Webmail, you can use the button “Filtering” under “Webmail” to get to the configuration page.

Now you will see an overview of all existing filter rules. If you would like to set up a new out-of-office notification, in the list of rules click on “Vacation” (“Abwesenheit”).

Set the start and end dates of your absence in order to have it automatically turn on and off. Otherwise the out-of-office notification is active as soon as you save the change. In this case, you will have to manually deactivate the notification when you no longer want it sent.

Now enter the subject and text of your out-of-office notification in the respective fields and change to the tab “Advanced settings” (Erweiterte Einstellungen).

In the field “My e-mail addresses” (Meine E-Mail-Adressen) please enter your complete Hohenheim e-mail address in addition to your Hohenheim user name (username@uni-hohenheim.de).

If you would like, you can save addresses to which no out-of-office notification should be sent (one address per line). You can also define after how many days the mail sender should receive another out-of-office notification from you: the default setting here is one week, and we recommend that you don’t choose a setting of less than 3 days.

Then confirm your entries by clicking “Save” (Speichern) if you have set the start/end dates of your notification or “Save and Activate” (Speichern und Aktivieren) if you did not set any start/end dates.

If you would like to set up both an out-of-office notification as well as forwarding, the rule that is used first is the rule that is higher on the list of rules. In order to change the order of rules, use the small arrows on the right-hand edge of the screen.

If you have set up an out-of-office notification before and would like to re-activate it, please click on the cross behind the rule “Vacation” (Abwesenheit) in the column “Activated” (Aktiviert). A check mark should then appear. The out-of-office notification is activated as long as the start and end dates of the absence are not in the past.

In Webmail, under “Mail” / “Filters” you will find the configuration page.

There you will see an overview of all existing filter rules. If you want to set up a new forwarding rule, click on “Forward” in the list of rules.

You can decide whether the emails should be deleted in your account on webmail.uni-hohenheim.de once they have been forwarded or whether they should be saved.

In the text field, you can enter email addresses for forwarding. If you want to save more than one address, please write each address on a new line.

Click on “Save and Activate” to activate the forwarding rule.

If you have activated both a forwarding rule and a vacation notice, the rules will be processed in the order in which they are shown in the list. To change the order of the rules, please use the small arrow on the right-hand edge of the screen.

If you already set up a forwarding rule previously and want to re-activate it, then under the “forward” rule, click on “save” to use it. A check should appear to show that the rule is active.

We recommend using IMAP to access your e-mails from different computers. E-mail retrieval via webmail also runs via the IMAP protocol.

POP3
With POP3 access, all emails from your inbox are transferred to your computer and then saved locally. POP does not have any folders on the server and therefore also has no group mailboxes.

IMAP
With IMAP access, you work online on the server’s mailbox. The emails stay there. With IMAP, you can manage folders on the server.

Staff can renew their fixed-term user account or request a change of institute.

You can find detailed information here https://kim.uni-hohenheim.de/en/staff-user-account

To send an email from a group email address, you will need to be a member of the group. In your email program, you will also need to set up another identity with the address of the group email address.

Set up the identity under webmail.uni-hohenheim.de:

• To do so, you need to go to “Preferences” then
• choose “Mail”.
• Now under “Personal Information” you can choose a “new identity” with the information of the group email address.

Once you have set up the identity, you can choose it as the sender when sending an email.

Set up the identity using Thunderbird: The requirement for this is that you have already correctly set up your Hohenheim user account.

• Go to your account settings: Edit -> Account settings...
• Now a new window will open and show you the settings of your email accounts.
• On the page “account settings”, <YOUR.ACCOUNTNAME> go to the button “Manage Identitites...”
• Then the window will open: “Identities for ...”. You will then see a list of the identities that are already set up. With “Add...” you can set up the new identity for the group mailbox.

Once you have set up the identity, you can choose it as the sender when sending an email from Thunderbird.

No, the recipient will not be notified, but the sender of the undeliverable mail will be informed.

If you have any questions about undelivered mails, please contact postmaster@uni-hohenheim.de with the approximate date, sender and recipient address.

In Webmail, under “Mail” / “Filters” you will find the configuration page.

There you will see an overview of all existing filter rules. If you want to set up a new forwarding rule, click on “Forward” in the list of rules.

You can decide whether the emails should be deleted in your account on webmail.uni-hohenheim.de once they have been forwarded or whether they should be saved.

In the text field, you can enter email addresses for forwarding. If you want to save more than one address, please write each address on a new line.

Click on “Save and Activate” to activate the forwarding rule.

If you have activated both a forwarding rule and a vacation notice, the rules will be processed in the order in which they are shown in the list. To change the order of the rules, please use the small arrow on the right-hand edge of the screen.

If you already set up a forwarding rule previously and want to re-activate it, then under the “forward” rule, click on “save” to use it. A check should appear to show that the rule is active.

Go to the menu on the left side and click on:

Preferences

Webmail

Shared folders

In the selection window, choose a folder in the upper right-hand corner.

You can make personal mailboxes available to other users.

If you have a computer available, e.g. in an internet café, then you can use Webmail.

>> Webmail

With your own computer or laptop, you can also work in your typical environment. However, you will either have to access the outgoing mail server with authentication or be connected via VPN without authentication.

>> Details on configuration

The Hohenheim user account password applies not only for email access but also for logging in to the computers in the computer rooms, the intranet, the ILIAS platform, CIFS, VPN access, and others. We therefore have a central method for changing passwords. 

We have a web-based password changing system for you. Please follow this link.

When you are signed on to the intranet, you will find the menu point “Edit Profile” in the Toolbox. There, you can change your password.

“show deleted” and then on “Purge deleted”. When signing out, emails that are marked for deletion are not automatically deleted.

Go to preferences, then to Personal Information,
and in the last line place a check mark next to: Save sent mail?
In the drop-down menu below that, pick the folder in which you want
your sent emails to be saved.

Please check whether you have your email set to only show subscribed folders.

Webmail:
Preferences
Email server and folder settings
If necessary, delete the check next to “Use IMAP folder subscriptions? "

Thunderbird:
Account settings
Server settings
Expanded
If necessary, delete the check next to “only show subscribed folders”

Preferences
        Address book
                Name format

There, choose “Last name, First name”.

If you are in the incoming mailbox, then in the line “Inbox” you will see more symbols, including a filter .

When you click on this, your filter rules are listed and you can activate filters.

E.g. if you want to have active filters automatically applied once you sign in, make this the setting under:

Mail
        Filter
               

In the new Webmail program, it is possible to give other people access to your calendar and address book. This makes it easier for working groups to find meeting times. If a user accidentally shares their address book with all Webmail users, then all users will be able to see it.

You can restrict which address books you want to see:

Address book
        Settings
                Address books

There, move all address books you want to see to the right-hand side.
Set the standard address book and save the settings.

Instead of clicking “Weiterleiten”, you clicked on “Weiterleitung”.

Help:

  Forwarding
     Removing a forwarding rule

You can also use other email clients. You can find instructions here.

All members of the University of Hohenheim (students, employees, ...).

Incoming and outgoing emails may not exceed 50 MB. For Webmail, the limit for outgoing emails is 24 MB. Larger emails are not accepted.

You should warn people to whom you want to send larger emails, and if it is not clear, ask whether emails of that size can be received. Incoming emails that are larger than 5 to 10 MB are not accepted by many external providers!

It is easier for these servers and the recipients’ inboxes if you save large files on a server and send the link.

Also see bwSync&Share

Yes. Incoming and outgoing emails are automatically checked for viruses and spam in two stages.

In stage one, the email header is checked. Because spammers constantly change their tactics, however, the criteria that lead to emails being rejected are also continually updated. Please let us know if an email is rejected that shouldn’t have been.

In general, the following applies: Emails from computers with dynamic IP addresses are not accepted.

Because otherwise serious email servers sometimes send spam emails or viruses (user accounts being abused), in stage 2 the email content is also reviewed before acceptance.

Emails with viruses and spam emails are rejected.  The email server that sent the email receives an error message. Emails suspected of being spam are sent to the recipient with ***SPAM*** in the subject.

There is no general spam folder.

Yes, if it has been detected.

Because there is no 100% detection accuracy for spam, mails suspected of being spam are marked in the subject and delivered. However, if your mail client supports rules or filters, you can set up an automatism that moves mails with the subject "*** SPAM ***" e.g. to a special folder or deletes them immediately.

Yes and no. You can send emails to local users that do not exceed the maximum email size. For exchanging files, you also have access to a file service. Ask the KIM IT unit about it. External email servers sometimes don’t accept executable Windows programs.  This also applies if the programs are put in a ZIP file.

All data will be deleted without being viewed.

No. Passwords should never be given to others, not even to employees of the Computing Center. You are liable for damages incurred by your email account (spam, ...).

However, you can request a group mailbox and a group drive on the fileserver for your project.

By requesting a Hohenheim user account.

• The life ring next to many fields and in the menu list will take you to the corresponding help text.
• In the software developers’ Wiki, you will find an extensive list of questions and answers in English.