Teaching, Technology, and Learning

UPDATE: I should have checked this first, but it appears that you can connect using IMAP/POP. Use ancexchange.uaa.alaska.edu as the server and your UAA username. For the outgoing server, use smtp.uaa.alaska.edu with authentication, not SPA. (not sure if this SMTP server will be going away eventually). This should work for Outlook and other email clients that support IMAP/POP. For Outlook, the approach outlined below is better though because it will integrate all of your folders (calendar, notes, etc.) while the former just gives you email.

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UAA is moving from a POP/web-based mail server to Microsoft Exchange. One of the side effects is that you can't easily use Outlook from off campus to read your mail. The typical default setup only works if you are using a computer from the UAA domain, which is not the case if you're trying to connect from home. There is a web version at http://webaccess.uaa.alaska.edu but it's inconvenient if you are used to Outlook and especially if you have tons of mail/folders/other accounts already set up. Fortunately, there is a way to connect from off campus but it involves quite a few steps. I've included screenshots for most of the steps below, using my computer running Windows Vista (things might look a little different if you are on XP or Windows 7).

1) Run the "Mail" applet in the control panel. Note that if you are on a 64-bit OS, then this is located in the "View 32 bit control panel items" entry.

2) Click on email accounts, then "New". On the following window, Make sure the Exchange option is selected, then click "Next".

3) Check the box for "Manually configure server settings" then click "Next".

4) Pick "Microsoft Exchange" and click "Next".

5) Enter "ancexchange.uaa.alaska.edu" for the Exchange server and your "afxxx" user name. Then click on "More Settings".

6) Under the "Connection" tab, check "Connect to Microsoft Exchange using HTTP" and then click on "Exchange proxy settings".

7) Enter "webaccess.uaa.alaska.edu" for the URL and change the authentication to "Basic authentication" then click "OK" and "Apply"/"OK" on the parent dialog window.

8) You should be back at the "Add new Email Account" window. Click "Next".

9) After a few moments you should get a dialog asking for your username and password.
Enter "uaaactdir\afxxx" where afxxx is your username, then enter your UAA password and
click "OK".

10) You may get a "Check Name" dialog box. If so, click on your name and then "OK".

11) Click on OK/Finish to end the setup and close the mail applet. Start up Outlook and it should connect to the Exchange server and ask for your password again.

At this point Outlook should create new folders that update to your mail folder on the Exchange server and you are finally done, although you will probably have multiple inboxes on Outlook and you might need to move around mail items.

If it works, congratulate yourself for your success by eating a cookie.