Tag: Email

Setup QUT Cloud Email

Everything is moving to cloud these days (ie 2012) and taking on the bandwagon QUT recently (ie 2014) migrated their research student emails (and soon staff emails) to the Microsoft Office 365 platform.

And as usual the guides on QUT websites seems to be confusing many users out there, so this is a very basic summary of settings you could use to set up access to QUT emails from your smart phone clients (Android, iOS, etc.)and other applications (Thunderbird, Linux, etc.).

First, there is a lot of confusion about the username. For anyone migrating to the new system, your new username will be different from your actual email (previously firstname.lastname@student.qut.edu.au or now firstname.lastname@hdr.qut.edu.au). The username will be in the format of firstname.lastname@connect.qut.edu.au.

Second, there will be a temporary password while the migration is taking place which you need to activate here: https://connect.qut.edu.au/. And this will be different from your standard QUT Access password. However, once the migration is completed (expected to be from Monday 15 September, 2014), you will be using the standard QUT Access password with the @connect username as well.

Third, as for the server settings you can try using one of the following depending on what is required by your email application.

  1. Exchange ActiveSync setting
    • Server name: outlook.office365.com
    • Port: 995
    • Encryption method: SSL
    • Domain\Username: jon.smith@connect.qut.edu.au
    • If your client asks for Domain and Username in separate text boxes, leave the Domain box empty and type your full email address in the Username box.
  2. IMAP settingQUT IMAP Setting
    • Server name: outlook.office365.com
    • Port: 993
    • Encryption method: SSL
  3. SMTP settingQUT SMTP Setting
    • Server name: smtp.office365.com
    • Port: 587
    • Encryption method: TLS

The changes are still very current and a lot of information in this post might be changing in the near future. I’ll try my best to keep you updated. As always if you have any feedback let me know in the comments below.

P.S.: I am no longer affiliated with QUT, so I can’t test most of the settings personally. But I’ve tested them with a friend’s account and everything seems to be working. So if you have any issues, please let me know.

Back to Gmail: Migrating emails from Google Apps mail to Gmail

It is a common scenario for people to migrate their Gmail accounts to Apps mail accounts. There are more than many how-to guides and tutorials covering this direction of the migration. But how about the opposite.

There are many obvious reasons for someone to migrate (back) to Gmail from a Google Apps mail account. Google Apps mail is used by many organisations, schools, etc. Thus, when we leave from that organisation, it becomes a necessity to migrate all our emails elsewhere.
Google Apps mail to Gmail
So lets jump into this quick tutorial on how to migrate all emails from Google Apps mail to Gmail. There are few other mechanisms suggested across the internet, but the one that works smoothly is using “imapsync”.

“imapsync” software is a command line tool allowing incremental and recursive IMAP transfers from one mailbox to another. It is useful for Gmail account migration or account backups.

IMPORTANT NOTE:

  • “imapsync” was a free tool, but now the author is charging almost $45 for a copy. It is affordable for commercial use, but for personal use the price is an overkill.
  • The earlier versions of this software can be found on the internet and still be used without copyright violations. (DOWNLOAD the earlier version for FREE).
  • This guide is based on a Windows installation. The use can be easily adapted to Linux and other platforms as we will be compiling from the Perl source code and running the software. (Those who are on Linux, you could simply follow the install instructions with the download file).

Step 1: Install Perl

  1. Download and install “Strawberry Perl”. (Install to the default install location).
  2. Double-click and Run the “update_env.pl” batch file to add the environment variables.

Step 2: Setup the Prerequisites

  1. Open “CPAN Client” under Start Menu -> Programs -> Strawberry Perl -> Tools.
  2. Run the following commands individually:
    • install Mail::IMAPClient
    • install Digest::MD5
    • install Term::ReadKey
    • install IO::Socket::SSL
    • If this presents a warning with “Net::SSLeay could not find a random number generator” and “Do you REALLY want to continue? [Default: no]“, give “yes” and continue.
  3. install Date::Manip
  4. install File::Spec
  5. install Digest::HMAC_MD5
  6. install PAR::Packer
  7. At this point you should be all set with the Perl setup and the following command should not give any errors.
    • perl -mMail::IMAPClient -mDigest::MD5 -mTerm::ReadKey -mIO::Socket::SSL -mDate::Manip -mFile::Spec -mDigest::HMAC_MD5 -e ”

Step 3: Install ‘imapsync’

  1. Download the earlier version of ‘imapsync’ for free from here (or buy the latest version from here).
  2. Extract the downloaded file, if you can’t extract a tar.gz, use 7-Zip.
  3. Open the “build_exe” batch file in a Notepad and change the folder path to the extracted folder.
  4. Run the “build_exe” batch file.
  5. This should have created a “imapsync.exe”.

Step 4: Using ‘imapsync’

  1. Open “Command Prompt”.
  2. Change directory to the ‘imapsync’ folder.
  3. The basic ‘imapsync’ command is,
    • imapsync --host1 mail.oldserver.com --user1 theoden ^
--host2 mail.newserver.com --user2 'theoden@newserver.com'
  4. For Gmail, change the following command with your Apps mail login and Gmail login details.
    • imapsync ^
--host1 imap.gmail.com --port1 993 --ssl1 --authmech1 LOGIN ^
--user1 theuser@oldmail.com --password1 password4user1 ^
--host2 imap.gmail.com --port1 993 --ssl2 --authmech2 LOGIN ^
--user2 newuserid@gmail.com --password2 password4gmail ^
--split1 100 --split2 100 ^
--reconnectretry1 30 --reconnectretry2 30 ^
--noauthmd5 --noreleasecheck ^
--timeout 1200  --allowsizemismatch
  5. Paste the modified command into the Command Prompt, ‘imapsync‘ should sync you mail accounts accordingly.
  6. It could take, hours (or days) to complete the sync, based on your internet connection speed and the amount of email in your mailboxes.
  7. For more ‘imapsync’ command reference run,
    • imapsync --help
  8. Once the sync is complete, you could also setup a forward all mails to the new Gmail account from the old Google Apps mail account.

This guide can look a bit more technical and for the ‘geek-handed’. If you follow the steps it should be straight forward.

However, if you are afraid you might burn your computer by doing this, just ask your friendly geek-next-door, and s/he should be happy to help you.

Happy migrating back to Gmail…!

Gmail Free IMAP – Just launched!

Gmail had just launched IMAP access to Gmail. Its just another cool feature and worked on may OS platforms and email clients like Thunderbird to Outlook to Apple Mail and even on iPhone. Sync your inbox across devices instantly and automatically. Whether you read or write your email on your phone or on your desktop, changes you make to Gmail will be seen from anywhere you access your inbox.

How do I enable IMAP?

You can retrieve your Gmail messages with a client or device that supports IMAP. To enable IMAP in your Gmail account:

  1. Log in to your Gmail account.
  2. Click Settings at the top of any Gmail page.
  3. Click Forwarding and POP/IMAP.
  4. Select Enable IMAP.
  5. Configure your IMAP client and click Save Changes.

I think this is a really nice feature and I’m going to try it myself and if there are any concerns or errors in my post, just let me know, as I’m writing this in a little rush, before going into a presentation at office. 🙂

To get more infomation about this, go to ‘Getting Started with IMAP for Gmail’.