Hawkmail Support For Your Routing Address

Forwarding Your University E-mail

IMPORTANT: If you have an active Hawkmail e-mail account, changing your e-mail routing address to something other than your Hawkmail routing address (hawkid@iowa.uiowa.edu) will close your Hawkmail account and cause all new email to be delivered to your e-mail routing address account.

Why is ITS Making this Change?

Currently, Hawkmail users who route their e-mail alias (firstname-lastname@uiowa.edu) to another e-mail account (such as Gmail or Hotmail) may not see certain messages that are sent to them. For example, if someone on Hawkmail sends an e-mail message to a person with a Hawkmail account, the message will be delivered to the receiver’s Hawkmail account and NOT to any other e-mail account they may be routing their e-mail to. ITS believes this is causing people to miss important e-mails, and we have received a number of complaints about how this works. Therefore, we are making this change in order to improve the delivery of e-mail for our customers.

What is a Routing E-mail Address?

Your University e-mail address (firstname-lastname@uiowa.edu), referred to as your e-mail alias, is actually a pointer to your real e-mail account, sometimes referred to as your routing e-mail address. Why have the two e-mail “addresses”? Having two provides some advantages. One advantage is that by using your official University e-mail address, recipients of your e-mail will be able to tell who you are and that you are affiliated with The University of Iowa.

Another advantage is that your published University e-mail address, your e-mail alias, will rarely, if ever, change. This allows you to change your “real” e-mail account behind the scenes as often as you need. You can give out your assigned University e-mail address to others and never have to tell anyone to change their address book if you change e-mail account providers. For example, when you leave the University, you will still have your UI e-mail address, but you can forward it to another e-mail account (Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, etc.) and continue to receive e-mail sent to your UI e-mail address.

Students can change their routing e-mail address through ISIS (http://isis.uiowa.edu) by going to MyUIowa, MyEmail, and clicking on Update Email Routing Address.

University employees can change their routing address in HR Self-Service (http://hris.uiowa.edu) by going to the Personal tab and clicking on Email Routing.

Important Information about Changing Your Routing Address

NOTE: 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.

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. However, you won’t have a way to send e-mail from your UI e-mail 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.

Additional Information for Gmail Users

Note:  This only applies for "Iowa" Hawkmail users.  The Healthcare Exchange system does not allow POP access, so this process will not work.

A second option exists for Gmail users. Gmail provides an option to “fetch” e-mail from other accounts, and setting up your Gmail in this way would allow you to retrieve your Hawkmail through Gmail. You would keep your Hawkmail account and keep your UI e-mail routing address pointing to your Hawkmail routing address (hawkid@iowa.uiowa.edu).

Please note that the processes referred to below are provided and maintained by Gmail, not the University of Iowa.

ITS can assist with questions about Hawkmail POP settings, but beyond the general settings, any issues with Gmail would need to be addressed by Gmail. Other web mail clients may provide this functionality as well, but Gmail is the only free option ITS is aware of at this time. Information and instructions for setting up Gmail’s “fetch” service can be found here: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=21289.

The following Hawkmail POP settings should be used for “fetching” Hawkmail in Gmail:

  • E-mail Address:  your UI e-mail address (usually firstname-lastname@uiowa.edu)
  • Username: your Hawk ID
  • Password: your Hawk ID password
    Note: Gmail’s fetch program saves your Hawk ID password.  When you change your Hawk ID password, you will need to change it in these Gmail settings as well to continue receiving your UI e-mail
  • POP Server: email.uiowa.edu
  • Port: 995
  • Check the Always use a secure connection (SSL) when retrieving mail option.

If you have additional questions or need assistance with your UI e-mail routing address, contact the ITS Help Desk at 319-384-HELP (4357).