Email Account Information for Medical Students
Every Pitt medical student is provided with an email address of the form lastname.firstname@medstudent.pitt.edu. Your medstudent.pitt.edu email account is maintained by the School of Medicine, and all official correspondence between the School of Medicine and medical students will utilize this address.
You also have a pitt.edu E-mail account, administered by the University at large. The University will send specific information to this account, most importantly, your EBill (tuition charges). It is important that you either regularly check your pitt.edu email account or forward it to your medstudent account so as not to miss important information from the University.
How to access your medstudent.pitt.edu account:
Requirements: Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or above. Most other browsers will work although some functionality may be lost.
Point your browser at "The Zone" - http://zone.medschool.pitt.edu/
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Click on the "Email" icon at the center of the page.
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Enter your User Name (lastname.firstname) [connected with a dot]
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Enter your Password (your default password is the first letter of your last name followed by the FIRST 4 numbers of your SSN followed by first letter of your first name, e.g. h4531y).
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Client should be set to "Premium"
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Security set to "Private" will increase the amount of time before automatic logoff. This should be set to "Public or Shared" if using email on campus.
If you have used web-based email before, the rest should be self-explanatory!
Frequently Asked QuestionsHow do I set up Outlook (or other IMAP clients) to check my email at home?
Setting up an IMAP client will allow you to check email from your own computer without the need for a browser, so you can bypass the Outlook Web Access mail client. An IMAP client is a program that retrieves your email messages and keeps a local copy of them on your computer. It is possible to check multiple email accounts at the same time with most IMAP clients - for instance, you could check your Pitt acount and your Pitt Med account with the same client.
You can still access your email through Outlook Web Access (
http://mail.medstudent.pitt.edu), even though you have set up an IMAP client on your computer.
There are a number of clients that have IMAP capability, including Outlook, Mac Mail, Eudora, Netscape Mail, Thunderbird, and many others. Most PDAs & smartphones also have IMAP functionality. For iPhone/iPod setup please refer to
http://zone.medschool.pitt.edu/[Help]/Document%20Library/PDAsetup.pdf
For information on setting up other IMAP clients for use with medstudent email, refer to the general instructions for setting up IMAP clients for pitt.edu email (previous paragraph), and substitute the following settings to get it to work with the medstudent mail server:
IMAP (or Incoming) server: www.medstudent.pitt.edu
SMTP (or Outgoing) server: www.medstudent.pitt.edu
The medstudent outgoing SMTP server requires authentication and SSL connection, using the same username/password that you use to retrieve your email.
Note: You may need to use your Internet Service Provider (ISP) SMTP server if you are accessing the internet from outside the Pitt network (if you use Comcast from home, this is smtp.comcast.net). The SMTP setting does not affect your ability to retrieve medstudent email.
For information on setting up other IMAP clients for pitt.edu email (not medstudent), see http://technology.pitt.edu/help/help-index/email-accounts-help.html
How do I forward my email?
Pitt email:
You may want to forward e-mail from your xxx@pitt.edu (where "xxx" is your Pitt ID) to another e-mail account. Here's how you do it:
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Go to accounts.pitt.edu
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Connect using your Pitt ID and password
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Select the link "Edit forwarding addresses"
You will see "xxx@imap.pitt.edu" in "E-mail forwarding address 1." This means that all the e-mail that is sent to your Pitt account is going to your Pitt mailbox.
If you want all your mail forwarded to a DIFFERENT account and NOT STORED at your Pitt account, delete "xxx@imap.pitt.edu" and enter the address to which you'd like mail forwarded. This could be "lastname.firstname@medstudent.pitt.edu" or "foobar@hotmail.com." You can enter up to five forwarding addresses.
If you want all your mail forwarded to a DIFFERENT account but would like KEEP A COPY at your Pitt account, do not delete the "xxx@imap.pitt.edu" field and enter your desired forwarding address in the "E-mail forwarding address 2" field. WARNING: If you choose this option, you will need to periodically delete old messages from your Pitt account or the account will get full and begin rejecting messages.
Press "Save Changes" when you are done.
Medstudent Email:
Note: You must use a recent copy of Internet Explorer on a Windows system to enable mail forwarding. You only need to use Explorer once to set this up; you can use any web client to check your email in general.
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Login to the email system, making sure that "Premium" is checked under the "Client" selection on the login screen.
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Once logged in, click on "Rules" in the lower left section of the window. If there is no "Rules" button, you may not be using Internet Explorer, or you may not have logged in with the "Premium" client.
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Click on "New" at the top of the right window
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Enter a name under "Rule Name", such as "forward."
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Near the bottom, click on the button next to "Forward it to" and enter the address to which you’d like mail forwarded.
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If you want to keep a copy of every medstudent email received, click on "Keep a copy in my inbox." Note that this will make sure every single email is received, even if your forwarding address is blocked or unavailable (highly recommended).
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Click "Save and close" near the top of the window, and confirm the rule in the window that pops up.
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Send a test email to your medstudent address and make sure you get it in the inbox of your forwarded address.
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Note: All mail forwarded will have your medstudent email address as the sender, the original sender can only be seen upon opening the email.
How do I change my name? This is a task that needs to go through the Office of Student Affairs.
Please see them in S532 Scaife Hall or by calling 412-648-9040.
What is the difference between the different email systems and why do I need more than one?
As a medical student at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, you are also considered a student of the University of Pittsburgh. This entitles you to two email accounts, a medstudent account and a university account.
Your medstudent account is your most important one, since it is where you get all official correspondence from the medical school. Your medstudent email address is simply
lastname.firstname@medstudent.pitt.edu. Here you have potentially unlimited storage space, which you can access by emailing files (as attachments) to yourself.
The university account is managed by the University of Pittsburgh, which has a whole office dedicated to maintaining the service. Thus the reliability may be higher than the medstudent server. However, you are only allotted 50MB of space. You can access both accounts through their web interface or by setting them up via an IMAP client on your computer. A summary of features is listed below:
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@pitt.edu |
@medstudent.pitt.edu |
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Managed by: |
University of Pittsburgh |
School of Medicine |
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Email forwarding: |
Yes |
Yes |
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Storage space: |
50MB |
Unlimited |
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Web interface: |
http://my.pitt.edu |
https://www.medstudent.pitt.edu/medstudent |
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IMAP access: |
Yes |
Yes |
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POP access: |
Yes |
No |
Follow the link below to manage your university account:
http://technology.pitt.edu/email-accounts/manage.htmlIf you have any problems, the following link is the friendly University of Pittsburgh Tech support:
http://www.technology.pitt.edu/helprequest/
As for you medstudent account, use the instructions in this document, or contact the Technology Committee at
technology@medstudent.pitt.edu for specific unanswered questions.
I can’t get into my email. What’s up?
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Check to make sure there are no problems with your internet connection. One easy way to do this is to direct your browser to a site that is always accessible like Google.
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Make sure you have entered your correct username and password. Your username is generally "lastname.firstname" and your default password is the first letter of your last name followed by the first four digits of your social security number followed by the first letter of your first name.
Note that the lastname.firstname field has a maximum of 20 letters. If your combination exceeds the 20 characters, cut it off at 20. If this applies to you, please contact the tech committee as it is often possible to set up a special email "alias" that does not truncate your name. Second, note that special characters such as apostrophes, dashes or spaces are not allowed in your email address. Please write the address as if these characters did not exist.For example, if your name were
Jean Paul van O’Donnell
Your login would be
vanodonnell.jeanpaul@medstudent.pitt.edu
You may check the Medical School Student Directory (accessible via the "Student Directory" icon on the home page of the Zone) to see how your name is recorded in our database. Your name in the directory will be identical to your login.
For instance, if you have asked us to use your first initial and middle name, then your address is:
lastname.firstinitial@medstudent.pitt.edu
e.g. vanodonnell.j@medstudent.pitt.edu
If you continue to have trouble, please contact the tech committee at
technology@medstudent.pitt.edu
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If you entered the correct username and password and are still unable to log on, off campus users may need to enter something in the login box under domain. Entering pitt.edu in the domain field should work, but if it does not the full domain is medschool.pitt.edu.
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There may be a problem with the email server. Problems with the server rarely last longer than a few hours, so try accessing email later.
How do I get personal help with using my email?
Contact your student tech committee representative in person, or by email. To reach the entire tech committee, you can email technology@medstudent.pitt.edu
Modified by Tech Committee 6/10/2009
technology@medstudent.pitt.edu