ITU to begin forced transfer of e-mail accounts to MasonLive on Oct. 17

A flier for the university's new student e-mail system, MasonLive, hangs in the hallway of a freshmen residence hall. All students are scheduled to be on the system by the end of the fall semester. (Jenna Beaver) 

While over 16,000 George Mason students have made the switch to the new Microsoft-based e-mail system MasonLive, thousands more have not. Student e-mail accounts that have not been manually transferred will be moved to MasonLive beginning Oct. 17.

Step-by-step instructions for setting up an account before the forced transfer are available on MasonLive’s website, and the Information Technology Unit team overseeing the project encourage students to take the time to follow the manual process.

In the case of a forced transfer, the user will no longer be able to log into their old MEMO accounts, and all forwards attached to the old accounts will be deleted. Incoming mail will be delivered to the user’s MasonLive address.

The tentative schedule for account migration is available online. ITU has also posted an account set-up checklist for those making the switch before their accounts are migrated.

Included on the checklist are links to tutorials on how to merge e-mail accounts from the old mail provider, MEMO. There is also a tutorial for setting up e-mail delivery to a smartphone, as well as one that explains how to forward to other services such as Gmail.

More on MasonLive

Mason’s ITU began exploring other e-mail options after asked by the administration, said Tracy Holt, the manager of enterprise messaging for ITU.

Holt said after looking into the options for an e-mail system, the choice was narrowed to Google or Microsoft. Both offered e-mail addresses that can be maintained following graduation, a feature that many of Mason’s alumni say they wanted. ITU ended up picking Microsoft’s e-mail system, which went live for incoming freshmen this summer.

“There have been some growing pains,” Holt said. He said there have been some technical issues, such as messages from Mason accounts appearing in the junkmail folder.

The switch to MasonLive coinciding with the confusion of the beginning of the school year made the switch more complicated, but there haven’t been any major problems, Holt said.

“For the most part, we’re hearing students are happier with the larger inbox,” Holt said. He also said feedback on SkyDrive, a 25 gigabyte shared web space that comes with MasonLive, has been positive.

“One of the big things students said they wanted was shared web space,” Holt said. He said SkyDrive can be used just like a thumb drive, with a link to the space appearing in each user’s MasonLive inbox.

If a student encounters problems with the transfer, they can call 993-8870. ITU asks that any comments be sent to mlfeedback@masonlive.gmu.edu

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C2M Executive Editor Kevin Loker contributed to this report.