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Accessing University Computing Facilities
When You Are Away From Essex

Accessing your e-mail | Accessing your files or other resourses | Accessing Usenet News

This page contains a few guidelines to checking your e-mail and accessing your files stored in your user area (i.e. M: drive) while you are away from Essex. Due to the large number of different software packages and operating systems that are in use in other places, this documentation is only intended as a guide, not a definitive set of instructions. If you are (for example) visiting another University, you should contact the Computing Service (or equivalent) of that University for more assistance. Taking along a printed copy of this web page may help them.
 

There are a number of options for accessing email remotely:-

• Configuring a suitable mail client. If you have access to an Internet connection and an e-mail client such as Outlook (which should be installed in Corporate Mode), Outlook Express, Netscape, Mozilla or Eudora you will be able to set up a POP3 or IMAP account to collect your e-mail from Essex. Here are details of the procedure for some common mailers. For other mailers, take advice from the technical support at the remote site.
• Outlook Web Access. OWA is a web-based system which generates webpages mimicking, as far as possible, the behaviour of Outlook. It requires a web-browser which supports HTML version 3.2 and JavaScript. So Internet Explorer version 4.0 or later, Opera with the correct configuration options, or Netscape version 4 or later, are all suitable. OWA is accessed via the Essex Webmail Portal
• Connecting to Essex and running Pine. If you are in a position to install software at the remote site, you can install SSH which will permit you to log in remotely on, for example, unix4.essex.ac.uk. You can then run the simple mail system Pine.
• Forwarding your mail to some remote site. Lastly, you could arrange to have your Essex email forwarded to some other site. Note that the Service advises against this option.

To access your M: drive use WinSCP or similar (see SSH for details). For other non-web based resources, access might be available via OpenVPN.

Note: It is no longer possible to access the files on your M: drive remotely via ftp.

The University no longer takes a Usenet News feed. Instead, essex.ac.uk machines have been given permission to use the JANET News Reader Service, a central store of Usenet News articles maintained by JANET. To make use of this, configure your News Reader to access the server news.essex.ac.uk. The details of this will vary for different readers, but here are instructions for Outlook Express 5 (or 6)

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© 1999-2010 University of Essex. All rights reserved.
Computing Service, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex, CO4 3SQ.
Computing Help Desk: telephone +44 (0)1206 872345. Main office: telephone +44 (0)1206 872329; fax +44 (0)1206 860585.

Document last modified by Bret Giddings
(e-mail: bret; non-Essex users should add @essex.ac.uk to create full e-mail address)
on 28 September 2011.