Your connection to information technology at the UW

Email and Calendaring

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

Please note: Some departments and business units 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.

Please note: Due to changes made by Google, major changes are coming to UW Google. These changes will affect Google Shared Drives, the use of UW Google with Shared UW NetIDs, and storage limits on UW Google accounts associated with personal UW NetIDs. Additional changes are also likely. For more detail and regular updates, see UW Google Changes Project.

Email feature comparison

	UW Exchange Online	UW Gmail
FERPA Compatible	✔	✔
HIPAA Compatible*	✔
Email space	Up to 100GB Or Unlimited with archive mailbox	Limited
Email attachment size limit	60MB	25MB
UW Groups available	✔	✔
Local IT support recommended	✔
Full application with Calendaring	✔	✔

**PLEASE NOTE:** 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 the Outlook Web App. 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,” that is, between an email account on UW Exchange Online and an email account on UW Gmail 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. If your UW email account is on UW Exchange Online you will be unable to view the Free/Busy information for a UW Gmail account from within your UW Exchange Online calendar, and vice versa.

Note: To better support calendaring collaboration, your department or business unit may require its members to use either UW Exchange Online or UW Gmail. Before choosing an email service, check with your department or business unit IT support organization. UW-IT strongly recommends that you choose the UW email service used by the majority of people you collaborate with.

Productivity Tools UW Exchange Online and UW Gmail both have associated productivity platform tools. Regardless of the 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. Please be aware that Google no longer offers unlimited storage.

Activation UW Exchange Online should activate automatically for all UW students, staff, and instructors, but you will need to manually activate UW Gmail using the Manage UW Google page on the UW NetID Manage Portal.

Your primary email service, where your email is delivered, is determined by forwarding. Use the Manage UW Email Forwarding page on the UW NetID Manage Portal to change forwarding to your chosen email service.

Last reviewed June 30, 2021

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