Alias and Routing E-mail Addresses

Faculty, staff, and students are eligible for a FREE e-mail account through the university. Students can request an account through ISIS. Faculty and staff can request an account at the Customer Information Desk, 2800 UCC.

What is an alias?

Your university email alias is the address you should always use when sharing your email address.  The alias address is typically your first and last names, separated by a hyphen, and followed by "@uiowa.edu" (e.g., jane-doe@uiowa.edu).  All university-wide and departmental mass mailings are sent to your alias address, so you must have a valid routing address in order to receive the mailings.  Your email alias always remains the same, even if you change your email to a different email provider like Google or Yahoo. 

What is a routing address?

For information on routing addresses and changing your routing address, see Hawkmail Support for Routing Addresses.

Your university routing e-mail address is important because that tells you where you are likely reading your email.   Most users will be reading their email in Hawkmail, but it is possible to have email sent to your alias go to your Engineering, Google, or Yahoo account.  The routing address usually appears in the form "hawkid@iowa.uiowa.edu". Mail sent to the alias addresses of the individuals in the examples below, will be delivered to each person's preferred routing address.

Examples of the alias and routing address working together:

Alias E-mail Address Routing E-mail Address
jane-adams@uiowa.edu jadams@iowa.uiowa.edu
chris-jones@uiowa.edu chrisjones@gmail.com
mark-jensen@uiowa.edu markjensen@mchsi.com
pat-smith@uiowa.edu pasmith@hotmail.com
john-clark@uiowa.edu jclark@aol.com
mary-clark@uiowa.edu maryc@yahoo.com

Changing your routing address:

If you already have a non-university e-mail account and would like to continue to use your Hotmail, AOL, or another account, then you should register your existing account as your "routing" address either in ISIS (students) or via HR Self-Service (faculty & staff).

IMPORTANT NOTE

If you have a university Hawkmail account, and you choose to change your routing address from your Hawkmail account (hawkid@iowa.uiowa.edu) to another account (e.g., gmail), this will close your Hawkmail account and forward all new e-mail to the e-mail routing address account(e.g. gmail). You will still be able to retain your UI e-mail address (firstname-lastname@uiowa.edu) for receiving e-mail, and all new e-mail will be forwarded to the e-mail account you specify in your routing address. Be aware that when the Hawkmail account is closed any existing email on the Hawkmail Exchange Server will be deleted. Please check your Hawkmail account at https://email.uiowa.edu to manually forward any email you wish to keep prior to changing your routing address thus closing your Hawkmail account.