Email Forwarding

If you're like me, you can't stand Lotus Notes. I wrote this up previously, but this is a more up-to-date copy of it for those of you who aren't aware that you can forward your Lotus Notes email to 3rd part clients:

It's actually fairly easy to circumvent the Lotus Notes software completely if you want to. First, you need a free email account. Try Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, whatever. I use Gmail, but you can use any email address you want. Also, I will do my best to explain so that anyone can follow what I'm saying, but if something needs clarification, let me know.

There are 2 main steps with step-by-step instructions included:
  • Set up your personal account to write like it's coming from your Lotus Notes account. (I don't know if this step works for other web-based email besides Gmail. Does anyone know? If not, skip ahead to 2nd bullet.)
    1. Log in to Gmail. Go to your Settings (top right corner of Gmail).
    2. Go to the Accounts tab (2nd). Next to "Send mail as:", click "Add another email address".
    3. Enter your Rush email address (e.g. Firstname_Lastname@rush.edu) when prompted. The click "Next Step". Then click "Send Verification" on the next screen. The next screen should contain a box to enter a confirmation code.
    4. Log in to your Lotus Notes email in a new browser. You should have an email from "Gmail Team", open it. Copy the confirmation code into the awaiting box in Gmail (or follow the instructions in the email).
    5. You should now see your Rush email listed on the Gmail settings page. Below this there is an option "When I receive a message sent to one of my addresses:", you may want to make this "Reply to same address the message was sent to". If you've never used this feature in Gmail before, please understand what it is. From now on, any email you send, you'll be able to choose who you want the email to be "From" (e.g. mynick@gmail.com vs Firstname_Lastname@rush.edu). It's a pretty cool feature.
  • Create a "rule" that will forward any emails you receive from your Lotus Notes account to your personal email account (e.g. Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail).
    1. Log in to your Lotus Notes email and go to the "Mail" tab if you're not there already.
    2. Hover your mouse over the "Tools" menu (just above your list of emails on the far right) and click on "New Mail Rule". A new window should pop up (make sure you've allowed pop-ups for this page).
    3. Make a name for your rule (e.g. Fwd_to_gmail)
    4. Under "Create Conditions", click the first drop-down menu and select "All Documents" (you need to scroll down). Then click "Add>>"
    5. Under "Specify Actions", select "Send copy to" from the first drop-down menu. In the next empty box, enter your personal email address (Gmail). Make sure "Full" is selected on the bottom drop-down menu. Then click "Add>>".
    6. The following step is optional, but beneficial. Under "Specify Actions", you can tell Lotus Notes to delete the original message. To delete messages from your Lotus account once you've forwarded an email to your personal account, select "Delete" from the first "Create Actions" drop-down menu. Then click add. If you're worried that deleting is too final, you can always skip this step. (Another option would be to create an "Archive" folder which you simply move messages to after they've been forwarded, so your Lotus Notes inbox stays clean.)
    7. Click "Save & Close" at the top of your screen. Then go back to your inbox.
    8. Test it. Have someone send you an email to your Lotus Notes account and watch the magic :)
Some things you won't be able to do outside of Lotus Notes:
  • Look up people's email addresses. I highly doubt there's a way to search the Rush directory from outside Lotus Notes.
  • Emailing the list-servs (maybe this is possible?). Update: This actually works from any email address.
  • Probably more things that I've forgotten.
UPDATE: You can also click on the document/attachment below to get a screen snapshot version of the above directions!
UPDATE #2: You don't need to be "invited" to get a Gmail account anymore as it states in the pdf below. Just go to gmail.com and click Sign Up.
UPDATE #3: These instructions stopped working for a few weeks last year. If they're not working for you, you can use the alternative method on the Email Forwarding book page.

Email Forwarding Alternate

Update: It appears as though at some point after the Internet Services department "disabled" email forwarding (as detailed below), they re-enabled it. Forwarding seems to be working consistently now. As long as that is the case, I would recommend following my earlier guide, Life Without Lotus Notes. Just make sure you don't add anything that "deletes" your mail in the rule in case the IS Department decides to disable it again. You can actually use both of these at the same time if you want to. Mail will only be forwarded/copied once.

This chapter of Tips and Tricks is a remix of a post I did last fall, Life Without Lotus Notes. In this post, I outlined how to go about using Lotus Notes to forward your email to another account. Unfortunately, many of us found out a few weeks ago that this ability has been disabled, although apparently not for everyone. At least, not yet. Many students (probably 50%) forward their email from Rush's Lotus Notes to an external mail service like Gmail, Yahoo!, or Hotmail. This is apparently a topic of some controversy for the Rush Internet Services (IS) department, since if you contact them, you will likely be told that email forwarding is "not allowed". However, upon speaking with someone from IS who specifically works on Lotus Notes, you might find the topic is far less controversial. Suffice it to say, according to the Lotus Notes folks, email forwarding is not illegal. Here are the steps to get things working in Gmail.

Forwarding your email from Lotus Notes to Gmail

  • First, please understand what we're doing. We are telling Gmail to ask Lotus Notes every so often if you've gotten any new emails. If you have, they will be downloaded to Gmail. The messages can be left in Lotus Notes and copied to Gmail or fully transferred to Gmail and removed from Lotus Notes. Please understand, any unread messages in your Lotus Notes inbox (or Folders) will be downloaded to Gmail. This includes emails previously forwarded using a "mail rule". If you're anything like me, that was over 2,000 emails. If you have a lot of unread emails, take a few minutes and delete them (or mark them as "Read") before completing the rest of this. Unless you want a ton of emails in your Gmail inbox.
  • Log in to Lotus Notes
  • Look at your screen and find what server your account is on. See the image below. The format will be something like: rpma02ln.rush.edu . You'll need this later so, keep track of it.
  • Log in to Gmail. On the top right, click on Settings. On the Settings page, click on the Accounts tab. Under "Get Mail From Other Accounts", click on "Add Another Mail Account". A pop-up window should come up. If it doesn't, be sure you don't have a pop-up blocker keeping you from viewing it. In the box (Email Address), enter your full Rush email address (e.g. Firstname_Lastname@rush.edu). Then click "Next Step". Under "Username" make sure to fill in your full Rush email address (i.e. Firstname_Lastname@rush.edu and not Firstname Lastname). Enter your password. Under POP Server, you will need to enter the server name you looked up in Step 3. If your server is listed in the drop-down menu, you can just select the correct one. Otherwise, select "Other" and enter the server address manually. You can leave off the "http://" (i.e. just enter rpma02ln.rush.edu). Leave the Port as 110. The remaining 4 checkboxes are optional. The options are explained in the next step, but if you don't want them, just click "Add Account"
  • The Options. "Leave a copy of retrieved message on the server" will leave a copy of every message you receive in your Lotus Notes account. If this box is unchecked, any emails that get transferred over to Gmail will be deleted from Lotus Notes. This is helpful if you don't want your Lotus Notes inbox filling up. If you're worried about losing some emails (even though you shouldn't) or if you'll need to get a copy of them from inside Lotus Notes, I suggest you check the box. "Always use a secure connection (SSL) when retrieving mail": I don't think anyone needs this. Someone let me know if I'm wrong. "Label incoming messages" refers to a feature of Gmail. If you've never used labels before, they're pretty useful, but this option is up to you. Finally, "Archive Incoming Messages (Skip the Inbox)". I don't know why you would want this, but maybe someone does. If you're wanting to automatically archive only "Rush News" emails, that's the topic for another post (coming soon). If you've decided on your options, click "Add Account"
  • Gmail will now to go Lotus Notes and download all unread messages. This may take a while, especially if you have a lot of them in Lotus Notes. Take 5 and go grab a cup of Hazelnut roast from ABP.
  • Once this is working correctly, you should not need to touch it again. Gmail will decide how often to check your Lotus Notes inbox for new messages. This could be as often as every 2 minutes or as infrequently as every 60 minutes. You are always free to come back to the "Accounts" tab and manually click the link "Check mail now", which will force Gmail to check. Unfortunately, there's no way to tell Gmail how often you want it to check Lotus Notes. This means that for time-sensitive emails, a 1 hour delay may be troublesome. One of the biggest benefits of just having Lotus Notes forward all your mail to Gmail is that it arrived in Gmail right away. Too bad this feature has been removed from our Lotus Notes...

Here are some images to help you out:
LN: Finding your mail server
LN: Adding your email address
LN: Fill in your mail account info

Writing as your Lotus Notes email through Gmail

As far as I know, this will only work through Gmail. I don't use Yahoo! or Hotmail, but if you can do this and someone sends me instructions, I'd be happy to put them up. Basically, these instructions are to tell you how to write an email in Gmail and still have it be "From" your Lotus Notes account (i.e. Firstname_Lastname@rush.edu).

  • Log in to Gmail. Go to your Settings (top right corner of Gmail).
  • Go to the Accounts tab (2nd). Next to "Send mail as:", click "Add another email address".
  • Enter your Rush email address (e.g. Firstname_Lastname@rush.edu) when prompted. The click "Next Step". Then click "Send Verification" on the next screen. The next screen should contain a box to enter a confirmation code.
  • Log in to your Lotus Notes email in a new browser. You should have an email from "Gmail Team", open it. Copy the confirmation code into the awaiting box in Gmail (or follow the instructions in the email).
  • You should now see your Rush email listed on the Gmail settings page. Below this there is an option "When I receive a message sent to one of my addresses:", you may want to make this "Reply to same address the message was sent to". If you've never used this feature in Gmail before, please understand what it is. From now on, any email you send, you'll be able to choose who you want the email to be "From" (e.g. mynick@gmail.com vs Firstname_Lastname@rush.edu). It's a pretty cool feature.

LN: Writing as another email address

Setting up a stand-alone email client

If you are a fan of stand-alone mail clients like MS Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, or Apple Mail, you may have realized that you can actually use these programs to check your Lotus Notes. I can't go through instructions for individual mail clients (at least not now), but if you tell your program that you want to create a new POP or POP3 inbox, this is the info you'll need:

  • POP3 Server or "Incoming" mail server: as determined above, step 3 (e.g. rpma02ln.rush.edu)
  • Username: Firstname_Lastname@rush.edu
  • Password: duh
  • SMTP or "Outgoing" mail server server: either postcard.cc2.rpslmc.edu or ponyexpress.cc2.rpslmc.edu (should not matter which). Neither connection should need a "secure" or "SSL" connection. If you're having trouble getting this to work, post a comment here and someone should be able to help you.