E-mail clients, like Mozilla's Thunderbird 2, let users combine multiple email accounts into one program for easy access. [ Image courtesy of Mozilla ]
You’re a college student now, so your school has given you a new e-mail address. Most schools require you to check your account daily, since they use it to deliver vital information—such as missed tuition payments, scheduling issues, delays and closings. And professors use it to contact you about assignments.
There is no getting around it: You can’t ignore your school e-mail. But you still have your personal e-mail to deal with. What’s an undergraduate to do?
Instead of monitoring several accounts separately, all with different log-ins and passwords (if you’ve followed our password guidelines), you can link all your e-mail accounts into one program or service. Here are some ways to do this:
Mail fetching. There’s a good chance that your Web mail service, like Google's G-mail, can automatically retrieve—or “fetch”— and combine incoming messages from your other e-mail accounts. For this to work, the other accounts must use a “POP” server. (If you don’t know whether your accounts use POP, you may want to contact the technical support for those accounts.) To set up G-mail to combine your accounts, go to its Settings menu and enable its POP option. G-mail will walk you through setting up and confirming which accounts are POP-enabled.
Once you do this, whenever your other accounts get new e-mail, you get a copy in the G-mail account. One slight limitation of doing this: When your e-mails are combined, there’s no obvious way to tell which message came from which outside account (without checking the details of the E-mail).
E-mail clients. There are stand-alone computer programs, such as Outlook (or Entourage, for Mac users) or the free Thunderbird 2, that allow several e-mail accounts to be displayed in one window. You do this by going to the program’s “E-mail accounts,” “Accounts,” or maybe “Preferences” screen, depending on your software. Unlike fetch services, such as the G-mail, here the e-mails are separated, so that you can tell which message came from which account.
On the go. You can use a cell phone or hand-held, web-enabled device (see our Ratings of smart phones, available to subscribers) to retrieve messages from multiple accounts. If your school has a Wi-Fi network, or you have a smart phone with a data plan that covers e-mail, you can link both your private and school email to your device, enabling you to ignore assignments on your way to the cafeteria.
By putting all your e-mail in one place, you’ll know right away when the Bursar’s office has put a hold on your account and that your friend just posted spring break pictures on Facebook. Aren’t you versatile?
For more back-to-school advice, visit the Babies & kids blog—for tips ranging from college cybersecurity to car buying advice for younger drivers. —Will Dilella
