Who Can Get It
Faculty, staff, students and affiliates are automatically assigned a Microsoft 365 license and campus email account to use during their time at CU Boulder. For details, see our Accounts & Eligibility pages.
How to Get It
After your CU Boulder email account is created, log in to Outlook on the web using your IdentiKeyUsername@colorado.edu email address and IdentiKey password.
Alternate Email Addresses
CU Boulder allows all active account holders to create an alternate first.last@colorado.edu email address (e.g., William Buffalo may request chip.buffalo@colorado.edu to use as an alternate).
To request an alternate email address, please send an email to oithelp@colorado.edu with your preferred alternate address.
Policies & Expectations
- Alternate email addresses are subject to the same policies and expectations that are established for all CU Boulder email accounts.
- Alternate email addresses that are offensive, obscene, inappropriate or intended to disguise your identity will not be approved.
- Inappropriate addresses include, but are not limited to, those which misrepresent your role in the CU Boulder community, denigrate members of the university community, or are designed to encourage abuse of CU Boulder facilities.
- Repeated attempts to use inappropriate addresses may result in revocation of your email privilege.
Alternate Delivery Locations
To accommodate faculty and staff members who work with national labs and other campuses or organizations, the university has made arrangements to allow the use of the domains below as a delivery location for campus email.
To have your CU Boulder email delivered to one of these domains, contact the IT Service Center at 303-735-4357 or oithelp@colorado.edu.
Approved Campus Domains (.edu)
- colorado.edu (variations that include colorado.edu are acceptable)
- cu.edu
- cusys.edu
- email.ucdenver.edu
- jove.uchsc.edu
- ludell.uccs.edu
- math.cudenver.edu
- uccs.edu
- ucdenver.edu
- uchsc.edu
- wizard.cusys.edu
Approved National Lab Domains (.gov)
- boulder.nist.gov
- cdc.gov
- nist.gov
- noaa.gov
- nrel.gov
- ucar.edu
Approved Institute & Organization Domains (.org)
- cuchbe.org
- cumcen.org
- cufund.org
- nsidc.org
- centerwest.org
- espacecenter.org
Redirecting & Forwarding Email
Outlook Forwarding Rules
At this time, manually forwarding emails or using an Outlook mail forwarding rule is not restricted and does not appear to impact email deliverability.
Administrative Forwards & Outlook Redirect Rules
While CU Boulder still permits administrative email forwarding and redirect rules for colorado.edu addresses, the process is becoming less reliable for all users across all platforms as major commercial email providers enforce tougher security measures.
To ensure that you receive important university communications, we strongly recommend checking your colorado.edu email account directly rather than using an administrative forward or Outlook redirect rule.
To learn more, see Campus Email - Forwarding & Redirects.
Email Delivery Management
Ransomware, Malware & Virus Protection
CU Boulder provides endpoint detection response (EDR) for both university-owned and personally owned computers. Using a three-tiered approach, OIT applies cyberthreat protection at the time of routing email for each email server and with each desktop email protocol supplied to the campus.
Every computer connected to the campus network should be running up-to-date EDR programs, and every CU Boulder computer user should be fully aware of secure computing practices.
Spam Detection
CU Boulder email filters quarantine messages that are flagged as Spam and High Confidence Spam. While spam messages can be released by the intended recipient, high confidence spam requires admin intervention to be released. Both actions can be requested by the user from the Quarantine page. Users may also add senders to their safe senders list to prevent future messages tagged as spam from being quarantined.
Phishing Detection
Our campus is often the target of malicious attempts to gain personal information, also known as phishing. OIT email filters quarantine messages that are flagged High Confidence Phish. These messages require administrator intervention to be released. This can be requested by the user from the Quarantine page.
If you receive a message that you believe could be a malicious attempt to gain personal information, please report it using Outlook's Report Phishing widget. In Outlook on the web, select one or more messages, select Report, and then select Report phishing or Report junk from the drop-down list.
Acceptable Use of Campus Email
Having a CU Boulder email account and network access is a privilege, not a right. Either privilege may be revoked for violations of the Acceptable Use of CU Boulder's IT Resources policy or other policies. Unacceptable behavior includes, but is not limited to:
- unsolicited and unauthorized mass email (spam)
- offensive language
- obscene material or language
- threats
- infringement on others' privacy
- interference with others' work
- copyright infringement
- illegal activity
Penalties for unacceptable behavior could include deactivation of one's account through university judicial action (for minor first offenses) or referral to law enforcement authorities.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I have to access my email through Outlook? For example, could I use an email manager like Apple Mail or Thunderbird instead?
Microsoft Outlook is the default email and calendaring solution for all CU Boulder faculty, staff and students. OIT highly recommends using either Outlook on the web or the Outlook desktop or mobile application for email and calendaring.
- Apple Mail: OIT can only provide limited best-effort support to Apple Mail clients. While we have provided documentation to configure the Apple Mail client, we cannot support the application past this initial configuration. For vendor resources, see Apple's Mail Support.
- Mozilla Thunderbird: OIT can only provide limited best-effort support to Thunderbird clients. For vendor resources, see Mozilla's Thunderbird Support.
Warning: If you have delegates assigned to your inbox or calendar, or you are a delegate of someone else's inbox or calendar, you must use a Microsoft Outlook client or application. Using another email manager in this manner can result in mailbox and calendaring corruption for both you and the delegate.
Can I redirect my campus email to an external email provider, like Gmail or iCloud Mail?
Faculty and staff are encouraged to use the campus email service for all university-related work, rather than a third-party provider (e.g., Gmail, iCloud Mail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Proton Mail).
While CU Boulder still permits administrative email forwarding for colorado.edu addresses, the process is becoming less reliable for all users across all platforms as major commercial email providers are enforcing tougher security measures.
To learn more, see Campus Email - Forwarding & Redirects.
Can I redirect my campus email to an account managed by another campus, national lab or organization that I work with?
The university has made arrangements to allow the use of the campus, national lab and organization domains listed under Alternate Delivery Locations above.
What if the domain for the campus, national lab or organization that I work with hasn't been approved yet?
To request to have your campus email delivered to a domain that isn't listed above:
- Contact your director or department chair to seek their approval.
- Have your director or department chair contact CU Boulder Legal Counsel, who will review the request.
As a faculty or staff member, what can I do if none of these email delivery options address my needs?
Faculty and staff are encouraged to use campus email delivery in order to comply with CU's Record Retention Policy. If you are concerned that this will interfere with your academic or research pursuits, you may request an exception to use a different delivery location.
