Cmail accounts are provided automatically to all students (including undergraduates, graduate students, and professional students). To use your Cmail account, you simply need to activate your Cornell NetID (see the New Students web site for more information about this process).
After you activate your NetID, you will use your NetID and password to sign in to see your email (cmail.cornell.edu), or go to the Cmail start page (start.cmail.cornell.edu).
Your email address is your NetID@cornell.edu (for example, pqs665@cornell.edu).
It's your choice whether to have your Cornell email routed to Cmail. Even if you don't use Cmail for email, you can still use its other features. (You can change the routing for your Cornell email through Who I Am -- you'll need your NetID and password.)
Generally speaking, faculty and staff do not have Cmail accounts, and undergraduate students do not have accounts on the central Exchange service that faculty, staff, retirees, and some graduate students use. Exceptions can be made to meet very specific needs.
Use your NetID and password to sign in to see your email (cmail.cornell.edu), or go to the Cmail start page (start.cmail.cornell.edu).
Yes. No matter where you access your Cornell email, whether that's through Cmail or another email account you have, your Cornell email address will still be your NetID@cornell.edu (for example, pqs665@cornell.edu).
No. Cmail is Cornell's email service for students, but if you don't want to use it, simply use Who I Am to route your Cornell email to the external email account of your choice. Cmail provides more services than just email, however, and you may want to use some of them.
Please note: You must route your Cornell email somewhere.
Yes. Per Google restrictions, you cannot send or receive messages that are larger than 25 MB, or messages containing attachments that are executable files (such as files ending in .exe), even if they are sent in a zipped (.zip, .tar, .tgz, .taz, .z, .gz) format. Please note that the process of adding a file to a message increases its size (by adding encoding necessary for transmission), so if your file is almost 25 MB, you may get a "too big" error message.
You can use Cornell's DropBox to securely transfer files that cannot be sent through Gmail. The maximum file size is 1.5 GB.
Yes. Because Cmail services are hosted outside of Cornell's networks, using them counts toward the 50 GB of off-campus (Internet) traffic that each student is given each month. The usage of most students is far below that threshold each month.
Per the Network Usage-Based Billing (NUBB) policy, usage above 50 GB per month is billed at a fraction of a cent per megabyte.
Cornell's commitment to student privacy has not changed as a consequence of offering Cmail (Google Apps).
As with all decisions that Cornell makes regarding information technologies, privacy and security are key elements. In addition, Cornell remains committed to freedom of expression. The Office of University Counsel managed the contract negotiations with Google to ensure that Google meets the university's expectations for freedom of speech, privacy, and security.
The process used to select Google Apps included a review of Google's privacy and security practices. Google provided satisfactory responses to the university's detailed inquiries and requirements about those aspects of their respective services.
Among those areas of concern were requirements that the vendor would not have any rights to access user content stored in emails or files in personal web space, or contained as part of any productivity applications. Google agreed to Cornell's requirements in the context of its privacy policy.
For a partial comparison, see Cornell's email stewardship policy.
Google does not include the advertising that is usually seen on its publicly available Gmail service for the duration of a student's enrollment at Cornell.
Students who do not want to use Cmail can route their Cornell email to the external email service of their choice by adjusting their Who I Am settings.
Between the provisions that are part of Cornell's contract with Google, and the choices that students have for email, we believe that all students have the flexibility to manage their email in keeping with their personal needs and values.
Cmail includes Gmail and several other tools. While you can continue to use your own Gmail account if you like, it will be completely separate from your Cmail account.
Your own personal Gmail account will also include advertising. Your Cmail account will not have any advertising until you graduate.
Note: If you rely on labels to organize your messages, please look at the notes at the end of this answer about labels and filters, before you follow the steps to move your mail.
First, you need to update some settings in your personal Gmail account.
You're now done with your personal Gmail account settings. Next, you'll change the settings in your Cmail account.
Cmail will now use POP to download your email from your personal Gmail account. It will download 200 message blocks every 5 minutes, so it may take a while for it to complete the transfer.
About labels: Please note that Google doesn't transfer labels when it moves messages between accounts using this method. A fairly good workaround is to recreate your labels in your Cmail account and use filters to re-label your messages. Because Google only applies filters to incoming messages, you need to do this before you follow the steps to move your messages.
How to export/import filters: If you already have filters set up in your personal Gmail account and want to use them in your Cmail account, you can use an experimental Google tool to easily move your filters.
Sign in to your personal Gmail account, click the "Settings" link, then click the "Labs" link in the yellow bar. Scroll down to find the "Filter import/export" feature, and choose the Enable radio button. Click the "Save Changes" button near the top or bottom of the window.
Click the "Settings" link again, then click the "Filters" link in the yellow bar. Click the boxes next to the filters you want to export, then click the "Export" button. You will be prompted to save a file that contains your filters. Note its name and save the file to your computer or USB flash drive.
Sign in to your Cmail account, and follow the steps above to enable the "Filter import/export" feature. Then click the "Settings" link again, and click the "Filters" link in the yellow bar. Click the "Import filters" link. Follow the directions provided by Google.
Cornell recommends using Google's Mail Fetcher to do this.
No, we cannot provide that service at this time, because it would require an individual customization for each user.
(Web address mapping refers to a suggestion that Google makes when you create a web site under the Sites section of Cmail. The default web address is something like https://sites.google.com/a/cornell.edu/whatever-you-chose/. Web address mapping, if it were available, would create a redirect address like https://whatever-you-chose.cornell.edu/.)
General FAQs about student email and collaboration services
