Frequently Asked Questions

Moving the student email experience to Microsoft Office 365 brings many important benefits! Here are just a few: 

Increased Collaboration

Bringing students, faculty, and staff together in the Microsoft environment will upgrade your ability to work and communicate with everyone at UTSA! Bringing your email into Office 365 will increase functionality with other Microsoft Office 365 tools, like OneDrive or SharePoint, providing seamless integration and smoother user experience.

Stronger Cybersecurity 

With student email in the Microsoft cloud, UTS will have better ability to block malicious activity, preventing more phishing and scam emails from reaching student inboxes. 

Note: Multi-factor authentication will be required for all student O365 email accounts. 

Prepare UTSA students for the Workforce

95% of Fortune 500 companies use the Microsoft Cloud environment. Thus, recent graduates are faced with learning Outlook, Teams, OneDrive and other Microsoft tools when starting their careers. Introducing our students to the Microsoft environment during their higher education experience will better equip students to embark on their professional careers.

To offer the smoothest transition for students, UTSA has chosen to make this shift mid-semester, October 4, 2021. Not only does this ensure that enrollment and financial aid processes are not impacted by the change, but this way students will already have regular contact with their faculty and other UTSA community members prior to email migration. 

Crucially, processes and systems (such as Blackboard) that depend on or pull student emails will not be impacted by this shift. If you have a concern about a system or process that uses student email, click here to make an inquiry.

Yes and No.

With the email migration, you will receive a new myUTSA email in the following format: firstname.lastname@my.utsa.edu. This will become your official myUTSA email and will need to be used to log in to Microsoft Office 365 tools and services. Your password will remain unchanged.

After October 4, any emails sent to your previous abc123@my.utsa.edu email address will be automatically redirected to your new inbox. This means that even though you have received a new email address, there is no need to update or change your email address anywhere you've used your abc123@my.utsa.edu-- although that is highly recommended.

Your new email address will be comprised of your preferredfirstname.lastname@my.utsa.edu.

Worried about which name will appear? Don't worry! You will be presented with your new email address as soon as you activate your new Office 365 account. On October 4, you will also be able to see your new email address as soon as you log in to ASAP.

Students can access their new email via Web, Mobile App, and/or Desktop App. Note: all methods of accessing your O365 email require two-factor authentication. 

To access your email and other Microsoft tools on the web, simply visit portal.office.com and log in with your new email address and current myUTSA passphrase. 

To access your email via Mobile App, download the Outlook app from your device's app store and log in with your new email address and current myUTSA passphrase. 

To start using the desktop app, visit portal.office.com and click "Install Office" in the top right corner of the page. Once installation is complete, open the Outlook application and log in with your new email address and current myUTSA passphrase. 

Nothing at all! Not only that, but after October 4, all emails that are sent to your abc123@my.utsa.edu email address will be auto-forwarded to your new first.last@my.utsa.edu email inbox. 

To make things as simple as possible, we do recommend that you change any accounts associated with your abc123@my.utsa.edu to reflect your new email address. However, this will not be necessary in order to receive your email as normal.

Students who forward or redirect email from their official @my.utsa.edu address to a private email (i.e. @gmail.com, @yahoo.com, etc.) do so at their own risk and the university is not responsible for the privacy and security practices handled by outside email vendors.

Additionally, UTSA will not be able to respond with detailed or sensitive information about the student to any non-utsa email address. Students must check their UTSA email accounts regularly (daily is suggested), and not having seen an important UTSA email message from a faculty member other University administrator or administrative office is not accepted as an excuse for failure to take important action.

For more details on this policy, visit: https://onestop.utsa.edu/resources/email/

Student workers will now have their staff Office 365 account with their first.last@utsa.edu email address. 

On October 4, student workers will also be issued a student Office 365 account, with a first.last@my.utsa.edu email address. 

To switch back and forth, simply visit portal.office.com and sign in with the identity you need to use: @utsa.edu for staff, and @my.utsa.edu for student!

Note: it is crucial that you keep your student and staff data separate! When your term of employment ends, all of the files and emails in your staff Office 365 account will be lost. 

You can download a summary .pdf of this information here.

• Your ability to sign in and access Blackboard has not been impacted by the email change. All of your email notifications from Blackboard will automatically arrive in your new first.last@my.utsa.edu inbox.
• However, you may need to make some changes to Blackboard-integrated tools and services you use:
  • If you use an iClicker account, you will need to manually change your email to your new address. Click here for instructions.
  • Similarly, you may need to manually change the email associated with textbook/learning products like Cengage. 
  • Please verify that Blackboard emails you need are not being sent to your Unfocused or Spam email. 

Prior to October 4, 2021, UTSA students received an Office 365 account with access to many Microsoft products and features, including OneDrive (but not email). At this time, you can still access this data. 

As you may know, all UTSA students, faculty, and staff are entitled to 1TB of cloud storage via Microsoft OneDrive for Business. For more information about how to use OneDrive, click here.

We recommend that you migrate any data and files from your previous OneDrive to your new one (associated with your new first.last@my.utsa.edu account) as soon as possible. 

How to access your "old" Office 365 Account/OneDrive

How to migrate your "old" data to your new Office 365 account 

Your email address changed, but your web browsers across devices may still "remember" your former email address.

Click here for a guide to changing/clearing/resetting your stored emails and passwords. 

• Sync your Outlook Email to your iOS device (Built-in App)
• Sync your Outlook Email to your iOS device (Outlook App)
• Sync your Outlook Email to your Android device (Outlook App)
  note: syncing your Outlook email to the Android native email is not supported 

Yes. For security and compliance purposes, access to UTSA-issued Google accounts will be terminated and all data deleted by the end of the Spring 2023 semester.

Note: Certain students of the UTSA College of Education and Human Development (COEHD) may be working with Google accounts and products after Spring 2023. Arrangements for these students are already in place.

Until Google account access is terminated at the end of the Spring 2023 semester, users are expected to comply with a 1TB data storage limit. Exceeding the quota will cause your Drive to be rendered read-only until you delete files to comply. Excessive Drive use (above 120% of the quota) may cause your account to be suspended and/or the data to be deleted.

For other questions or concerns related to the use and migration of your Google Drive data, please contact tech café (techcafe@utsa.edu).

Yes! You have several options for migrating your data, but we recommend the following options:

• If you’d like to migrate your data directly to another Google account, simply follow these steps.
• If you don’t have another Google account, or you’d prefer to download your data to a device, you can learn more from Google and/or use Google Takeout to migrate your data.

We recommend that you save all of your student data to your new OneDrive. OneDrive is your UTSA-provided cloud storage solution, including 1TB of free storage space. You can access it via your desktop or portal.office.com at any time!

Faculty and staff should be aware that this email migration is taking place. Please extend as much grace as possible while students navigate this major change.

As faculty/staff, your utsa.edu email address will remain unaffected. While students will have enhanced access to Office 365 with the addition of tools like Outlook, they will not have access to Microsoft Teams. Attempts to contact or work with students via Microsoft Teams will be unsuccessful. 

On October 4, 2021, all Gmail addresses ending in my.utsa.edu will become read only, including for faculty and staff. All data in your Google Workspace (formerly GSuite) will remain accessible well into the foreseeable future. 

 Please be aware that UTSA Gmail service is intended for student use. All Faculty and Staff are provided a first.last@utsa.edu email address through Office 365 with which to communicate with students.

Just as with all other students, if you are faculty/staff AND a student, you will receive a new Office 365 email account (first.last@my.utsa.edu). This is the email which you should use for all of your personal student-related work.

Because all email sent to a student's former abc123@my.utsa.edu email address will be auto-forwarded to their new email address, services you currently use to send email to students will not be impacted by this change. 

If you encounter any unexpected snags with a product or service you use to send email to students, please contact tech café right away. 

Have a service or tool you'd like us to double-check ahead of the move? We've got your back! Simply email uts@utsa.edu to get started.