Email & calendaring

Last updated: July 15, 2024

Overview

UW offers both the UW Google and UW Office 365 productivity, collaboration, and email platforms for use by the UW community.

  • UW Exchange Online
    Part of UW Office 365, UW Exchange Online offers HIPAA-compliant email and calendaring.
  • UW Gmail
    Part of UW Google, UW Gmail is free of advertising and has greater privacy protections than consumer Gmail.

Which email system should you use?

Important considerations

  • Follow your organization’s guidance for which option to choose: Some organizations require their personnel to use either UW Google or UW Office 365 for their email and calendaring. Consult with your local IT support before you select either UW Google or UW Office 365 as the destination for your UW email forwarding.

    Email forwarding advisory: Only email sent directly from a UW email address (@uw.edu) can be reliably delivered to the email forwarding address you select on the manage email forwarding page. For more information, please review our email forwarding information page.

  • Major changes to UW Google: UW Google is undergoing several major changes. For more details and regular updates, see UW Google Changes Project.

Email feature comparison

UW Exchange Online UW Gmail
FERPA Compatible
HIPAA Compatible*
Email space Up to 100 GB Up to 100 GB (100 GB storage quota shared between Gmail, Drive, and Photos)
Email attachment size limit 60 MB 25 MB
UW Groups available
Local IT support recommended
Full application with calendaring
*IMPORTANT: UW Medicine workforce members and clinical students are prohibited from forwarding their UW email to UW Gmail. For more information on this policy, please contact comply@uw.edu.

Additional considerations

  • Support for UW Exchange Online: Many Exchange features do not work unless the desktop version of Outlook is installed and configured. Local IT support is strongly recommended for anyone who wants to use UW Exchange Online with Outlook. If you do not have local IT support, we recommend using UW Gmail or limiting your use of UW Exchange Online to Outlook on the web. See this page for more information on UW Exchange Online email client support guidelines.
  • Scheduling Across Services: UW Exchange Online and UW Gmail both offer excellent, full-featured calendaring services. However, scheduling “across services” – between an email account on UW Exchange Online and an email account on UW Google – is limited. It is possible to send and update calendar meeting requests from UW Exchange Online to UW Gmail (and vice versa). However, it is not possible to view “Free/Busy” information for the calendar of a UW email account that is not on the UW email service your account is on.
  • Productivity Tools: UW Exchange Online and UW Gmail both have associated productivity platform tools. Regardless of the email service you choose, you can take advantage of the tools available in both services.
    • UW Exchange Online is part of UW Office 365. UW Office 365 includes OneDrive, and online versions of Word, Excel, and other Office applications.
    • UW Gmail is part of UW Google. UW Google includes Google Drive, Calendar, Sites, and other Google apps like YouTube.

Setting up your UW Email inbox

  1. Activate a service
    • UW Exchange Online – this should activate automatically for all UW students, staff, and instructors
    • UW Gmail – you will need to manually activate UW Gmail using the Manage UW Google page on the UW NetID Manage Portal.
  2. Forward your email to the new service

Useful email tools

Accessing your email through MyUW

This 15-second video shows you where to find your email in MyUW.

UW Event Calendar

The UW Event Calendar is a service providing a calendar for all UW campus public events. In addition, it can be used to set up departmental calendars, including academic, schools, colleges, and other groups. It provides a better mobile experience, an improved user interface, event registration, and the ability to embed calendars into websites. Also, an event created in one calendar can appear in multiple calendars. Anyone with a UW NetID can request a calendar, which can then be used to share events with the campus calendar. Learn how to use the calendar system: UW Event Calendar Help.