Email and Calendars

PennO365 is a collaboration platform that provides a full-featured email system with integrated calendaring.

Key features of PennO365 include:

  • Full-featured web interface for accessing email and calendar, as well as email and integrated calendar compatibility with desktop email clients such as Microsoft Outlook and Apple Mail.
  • Access from mobile devices, including iOS and Android-based phones and tablets.
  • Availability of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. from anywhere that you have web access.

Email

How do I access webmail?

  • Click here to access your mail online.

How do I change my display name?

  • Go to the VPUL Technology Services website.
  • Under “Exchange Information”, click on “Change Exchange Password.”
  • Enter your current PennKey and Password.
  • Click on “Change Display Name.”
  • Erase your current display name, enter your new display name, and click on “Change Display Name.”

How do I change my email password?

  • Go to the VPUL Technology Services website:
  • Under “Exchange Information”, click on “Change Exchange Password.”

How do I create a custom signature in Outlook?

  • Go to the main Outlook window, and then to Tools > Options.
  • In the Options window that appears, click the Mail Format tab, then press the Signatures button. From here you can create and edit signatures for all your outgoing and forwarded messages, as well as signatures for your replies.
  • To create a signature, simply click the New button.
  • You’ll be prompted to give your signature a name. Type in the name you want and then enter the details that you want to appear in the signature. You can use the formatting tools to customize the signature.
  • Once you’ve finished working on your signature, click Save to store it. The signature will then be automatically attached to any outgoing messages from the selected mail account.

How do I set a vacation message?

  • A Vacation Message (also known as an auto-reply or an Away Message) can be used to let people know that you will not be checking your email messages for a given period of time. Away messages for Exchange email accounts can be set up either from within Outlook or from Exchange Webmail. Away Messages for PoBox/Zimbra accounts must be set in Zimbra Webmail. Directions for each are below:
Setting a vacation message for Exchange (Outlook)
  • Click on the “Tools” menu and choose the “Out of Office Assistant.”
  • Near the top of the window, click on the button that says “Send Out of Office auto-replies.”
  • If you would like to set a specific date range during which these will be sent, check the box that says “Only send during this time range” and choose the appropriate start and end times. If you would like the messages to continue until you manually turn them off, leave this box unchecked.
  • In the tab labeled “Inside My Organization,” enter the text that you would like to be sent in the auto reply. Unless you would like different messages to go to people inside Penn and outside Penn, we recommend that you then copy this text and paste it into the tab labeled “Outside My Organization.” If you do not do this, vacation messages will not be sent to addresses outside of Penn.
  • Click “OK.”
  • Your vacation message should now be set. We recommend sending a test message to your address from an alternate email account to be sure that the vacation message is working.
Setting a vacation message for Exchange (Webmail)
  • Sign into Exchange Webmail at https://outlook.exchange.upenn.edu/owa.
  • Go to Options (top right corner) > Out of Office Assistant.
  • Click on the button that says “Send Out of Office auto-replies.”
  • If you would like to set a specific date range during which these will be sent, check the box that says “Send Out of Office auto-replies only during this time period,” and choose the appropriate start and end times. If you would like the messages to continue until you manually turn them off, leave this box unchecked.
  • If you have used an auto-reply before, you will need to check the box that says “Replace my current Out of Office message with the following.”
  • Enter the text that you would like to appear in the auto-reply message into the box labeled “Send an auto-reply once to each sender inside my organization with the following message.”
  • Click Save in the upper left corner.
  • Your vacation message should now be set. We recommend sending a test message to your address from an alternate email account to be sure that the vacation message is working.
Setting a vacation message for PoBox/Zimbra (Webmail)
  • Sign into Zimbra Webmail at https://zimbra.upenn.edu.
  • Click on the Preferences tab above your email messages.
  • From the new row of options that opens, click on the Mail tab.
  • In the Mail Preferences screen, go down to the Receiving Messages section.
  • Check the box for “Send auto-reply message.”
  • Fill in your vacation message in the text box.
  • If you would like to set a specific date range during which these will be sent, check the boxes for “Start Date” and “End Date” and fill in the appropriate dates.
  • Click Save in the upper left-hand of the screen.
  • Your vacation message should now be set. We recommend sending a test message to your address from an alternate email account to be sure that the vacation message is working.

How can I stop getting messages saying that I’m nearing my quota?

  • The standard email quota is 1GB (1000MB). This is the amount of space that you have available on the mail server to store your messages and attachments. As you near your quota, you will begin to get messages both from the email system and from VPULTS warning you that you need to reduce the size of your mailbox. While many people will never reach this limit, others receive large quantities of email and/or many large attachments and may reach it easily.
  • There are a few things that you can do to reduce the size of your mailboxes. One of the easiest ways is to archive messages in a local folder. If you look at your list of folders, below your primary mailbox you should see a second mailbox called “Local Mail,” “POBox Mail,” “Archived Mail,” or something similar, depending on how your account was set up. This is the section that contains folders that are local to your machine. To create new folders here, right click on the mailbox and choose “New Folder.” Once you have folders here, you can drag messages to them just as you would file messages to folders on the server. This will save these messages locally and remove them from the mail server. If you don’t see a “Local Mail” section, contact us and we can help you find it or set it up.
Determining how much space you are using
  • The easiest way to find out how much total space you are using is to go to the following link and sign in with your PennKey and password: https://am.exchange.upenn.edu/AccountServices/profile/viewQuotaUsage.aspx.
  • You can also get there by going to the VPULTS homepage and clicking on the “Change Exchange Password” link. On the page that comes up after you log in, click the Disk Quota Usage link.
  • To see how much space your individual folders are using, you will need to open Outlook. At the top of your list of folders, you will see something that should say “Mailbox – <Your Name>.” Right-click on that and choose Properties (at the bottom of the list). In the window that opens up, you should see a button that says “Folder Size.” Click on that and you will get a list of all your folders and the amount of space that each is taking up. All folders that are found in the “Mailbox – <Your Name>” section are on the server, and messages in these folders will count towards your quota.
  • Once you determine which folders are causing the problem, you can open them and sort by size to find the largest messages. File large messages and messages with attachments in a local folder.

Tips:

  • At the end of each month, move messages from your “Sent Items” folder to a local folder. Messages saved locally do not count against your quota.
  • Sort folders by size to find large messages and attachments. File messages with large attachments locally.
  • Empty your Deleted Items folder at the end of each week. (Right-click on the Deleted Items folder and select “Empty Deleted Items Folder.”)
  • Sort messages by Sender, then select a group of messages from one person and file them locally.

How can I send a message to a large group of people?

  • If you need to send regular messages to a group of 10 or more people, a listserv is a good choice. A listserv is essentially a list of email addresses that can be easily managed and written to. Listservs are a useful tool for sending messages to large groups of people, and can be used for things like staff email lists, student member lists, announcement lists, etc. Various options exist for specifying who can join and write to a list and how messages are received.
  • If you think that a listserv could be a useful tool for your department, please fill out the listserv request form here.

How can I check my email while I’m away from my office?

  • Webmail clients exist for both Exchange and PoBox email accounts. These allow you to access your Penn email from anywhere in the world. To connect to the webmail clients, go to the main Penn website and click on the “Webmail” link at the top of the page. On the page that opens, choose either exchange.upenn.edu or pobox.upenn.edu from the dropdown menu. For Exchange, sign in using your regular email username and password. For PoBox, sign in using your PennKey and PennKey password.
  • You can also access the webmail clients directly from the following links:

How do I send a mass or bulk email message?

When sending a mass email you must follow these four guidelines:

  • Messages must be formatted in a plain-text format (no bold, italics, embedded images, etc.).
  • Messages must be sent after business hours, preferably after 7:00 PM.
  • Messages cannot contain any attachments.
  • Replies to your mass email must come directly back to your e-mail address (not to the listserv).

What is the VPULTS policy on e-mail accounts?

The following policies must be adhered to in accordance with VPUL’s computing policy:

  • A user’s e-mail cannot be forwarded to a personal e-mail account (gmail.com, hotmail.com, yahoo.com, etc.).
  • When a user leaves the division (either by departing the University or moving to another division), that users e-mail account will be deleted and all e-mail messages will be lost (calendars, contacts, messages, attachments, etc.).
  • A user can request an out-of-office message to be placed on their account for a period of up to 30 days with a supervisor’s approval.
  • The primary purpose of a user’s divisional e-mail account is for business purposes.
  • When a user leaves the division, VPULTS cannot provide other staff members with access to that person’s e-mail account or e-mail messages. Pertinent messages should be forwarded by that user before departing the division.
  • VPULTS cannot provide access to local e-mail when a person departs from the division.
  • A user should never provide his or her e-mail password to another individual.
  • All of these policies conform with the Policy on the Acceptable Use of Electronic Resources.

 

Calendar

How do I create an appointment?

  • In the File menu, go to New > Appointment.
  • In the Subject box, type a description.
  • In the Location box, type the location.
  • Enter the start and end times.
  • Select any other options that you want.
  • In the Appointment tab, go to Actions > Save and Close.

How can I make an appointment recur?

  • Open the appointment that you want to set to recur.
  • In the Appointment tab, go to Options > Recurrence.
  • Click the frequency (Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Yearly) with which you want the appointment to recur, and then select the options for the frequency.

How can I make an appointment private?

  • Create or open the appointment that you want to make private.
  • In the Appointment tab, go to Options > Private.

How can I create meetings and invite guests?

  • In the File menu, go to New > Meeting Request.
  • In the Subject box, type a description.
  • In the Location box, type a description or click Rooms to choose from rooms available for automatic scheduling.
  • In the Start time and End time lists, select the start and end time for the meeting. If this is an all-day event, select the All-Day Event check box. An all-day event is a full 24-hour event lasting from midnight to 11:59 p.m.
    • You now have the ability to attach files, create a Meeting Workspace, or simply type any information that you want to share with the recipients. For more information about Meeting Workspaces, see the See Also section.
  • On the Meeting tab, go to Show > Scheduling Assistant. The Scheduling Assistant helps find the best time for your meeting.
  • To begin inviting guests, go to Add Others > Add from Address Book.
    • In the Select Attendees and Resources dialog box, enter the name of a person or resource that you want to invite to the meeting. If you are searching with the More Columns option, then click Go.
    • Select the name from the results list, click Required, Optional, or Resources, and then click OK. Required and Optional attendees appear in the To box on the Meeting tab, and Resources appear in the Location box.
    • Click Send.

How can I change an appointment, event, or meeting?

  • Open the appointment, event, or meeting that you want to change.
  • Do one of the following:
    • Change options for an appointment that is not part of a series:
      • On the Appointment tab, change the options, such as subject, location, and time that you want to change, and then click Save and Close.
    • Change options for all items in a series:
      • Go to Open Recurring Item > Open the Series.
      • On the Appointment tab, change the options, such as subject, location, and time that you want to change.
      • To change recurrence options, go to Appointment > Options > Recurrence. Change the options, such as time, recurrence pattern, or range of recurrence, and then click OK.
      • Click Save and Close.
    • Change options for one item that is part of a series:
      • Go to Open Recurring Item > Open This Occurrence.
      • On the Appointment tab, change the options, such as subject, location, and time, that you want to change and then click Save and Close.
  • Tip: In Calendar, you can drag the appointment, event, or meeting to a different date. You can also edit the subject by clicking the description text and typing your changes. You can change an event into an appointment, causing the time to be blocked out in your calendar, by clearing the All-Day Event check box and then entering the start and end times of your choice. All-Day Events are defined as lasting from midnight to 11:59 p.m.; clearing this check box allows you to enter specific start and end times.

How can I share my calendar with a coworker?

  • Sharing calendars can be a useful way for people within an office to schedule things. There are two steps to sharing a calendar in Microsoft Outlook:
    • Granting permission for others to view a calendar
    • Opening a Shared Calendar
Granting permission for others to view your calendar
  • Open Outlook and click on the Calendar tab in the lower left corner of the window.
  • You should see a heading called My Calendars in the panel on the left, with a subheading called Calendar right beneath it.
  • Right‐click on Calendar and from the menu that pops up, click on Properties.
  • In the window that opens, go to Permissions > Add.
  • Begin typing in the FIRST name of the person that you want to add. If you are unable to find them, try a different version of their name that they might use, such as Liz rather than Elizabeth.
  • Once you see their name, click on it to select it and then click Add. The name should show up in the box at the bottom. Once the name has appeared in the box, either select another name or click OK if you are done.
  • Select the name from the list at the top of the window, and then click on the drop down menu to the right of the words “Permission Level.”
  • If you would like the person to be able to both view and add events to your calendar, choose Editor. If you would like them only to be able to view events on your calendar, choose Reviewer.
  • Click OK. The selected person now has access to your calendar. In order for them to actually see your calendar, however, they will need to open it as a Shared Calendar.
Opening a Shared Calendar
  • Open Outlook and go to Calendar > Open a Shared Calendar.
  • In the window that pops up, click on Name.
  • In the new window that opens, start typing the name of the person or calendar that you would like to view or edit.
  • When you see the name of the calendar that you would like to open, click on it, and then click OK.
  • You should now see the shared calendar listed under “People’s Calendars.” To view a shared calendar, click on the check box next to it. To change between Overlay and Side by Side views, click on the Arrows on the tabs at the top of each calendar.
  • To view a calendar in a separate window, right‐click on the calendar name in the list and click Open in New Window.
Viewing a Shared Calendar on a web browser