Summary

Email has become one of the standard methods for electronic communications (it has been the academic standard for decades), but in the rush to make it ‘easy to use’, a lot of useful features have taken a back seat.

Many of these can save time and effort, and make life easier and more productive for you and the people you send email to. By contrast, although everyone suffers from annoying or damaging email, most people rarely get to see the trouble that their own [ab]use of email can cause to others. Behaving as a well-dressed network citizen means observing the ‘netiquette’ that marks you out as a productive and useful member of the electronic community.

Here are some tips to make life easier for you and the rest of the campus (and the world), and increase your kharma as a considerate and valued email user. You should definitely read the Email Charter (10 Rules to Reverse the Email Spiral).

You may also like to read the Senior Technical Officer's advice on Spam Avoidance in order to keep your mailbox free of spam.

11 February 2016 (rev 6)

Links: Your own mailer • Outlook Web Access (staff) • GMail (students) • IMAP

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Whole document

  1. Know thyself
  2. Handling formats and attachments
  3. Using threads
  4. Trim your signature
  5. Use mailing lists for regular communication
  6. Look smart
  7. Alternatives to Microsoft Outlook and the OWA/O365 interface
  8. Filtering messages
  1. Setting up Multi-Factor Authentication App Passwords
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Note on required and optional features

In this document, the keywords MUST, MUST NOT, REQUIRED, SHALL, SHALL NOT, SHOULD, SHOULD NOT, RECOMMENDED, MAY, and OPTIONAL have a very specific meaning when shown in THIS TYPESTYLE, and MUST be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 (Bradner, 1997).

When shown in normal type, these words keep their conventional contextual degree of meaning.

ToCA. Setting up Multi-Factor Authentication App Passwords

Follow this procedure to create a special pre-authenticated ‘App Password’ to let you add your email account to an app which does not support MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication).

You will need to use this special password to log back into an account on such an app, when your email account has been given MFA that it didn't have before (locking you out).

Note that you MUST have been registered for MFA before you start this procedure, as it will send a code to your nominated cellphone in order to log you in.

You SHOULD have the setup or preferences for your new or existing email app open in another window where you want to use this app password, as it will be displayed only once and MUST be copied for use, as explained in step 10 in the procedure below.

  1. In your browser, go to https://login.microsoftonline.com/ and click on your account.

    Figure 14. Selecting your account

  2. If you were already signed in, you MAY be redirected to the Microsoft Office Home page without the need to sign in again.

    Otherwise, on the sign-in page, sign in with your UCC email address and password.

    Figure 15. Logging in

  3. Click on the gearwheel (⚙) Settings button at the top of the page, and then click Office 365 under Your app settings.

    Figure 16. Open  Settings 

  4. From the menu on the left, click on Security & privacy.

    In the middle panel, click on Additional security verification.

    Figure 17. Select Additional security

  5. This reveals a hidden paragraph: click on the link to Update your phone numbers used for account security

    Figure 18. Clicking Update your phone numbers

  6. You will be challenged by the Microsoft security portal and asked to type in the code that will have been sent to your nominated cellphone.

    When the code arrives, type it in and click  Verify 

    Figure 19. Authenticating with MFA code

  7. This brings you to the Additional security verification page.

    To add an App Password, click on the phrase App Passwords (in grey, disguised as part of the title: it is actually a link)

    Figure 20. Picking App Passwords

  8. This takes you to another additional security verification page where you can click on the  create  button to create a new app password.

    Figure 21. Creating an App Password

  9. Click on  create  and give the name of the app you are creating this password for (eg AquaMail, Thunderbird, etc) and click  next 

    Figure 22. Naming your new App Password

  10. Your new app password will be displayed. You can copy it by clicking on the button  copy password to clipboard  so that you can paste it into the window where you are setting up your account in the new app (or re-enabling the account in your existing mail app).

    Figure 23. Your new App Password displayed

    Microsoft will never display this password again, so you only get one shot at copying it. If you mess it up and fail to copy it, you'll have to create another one.

  11. Click  Close  to go back to your list of app password names.

    You can create more app passwords at this stage (go back to step 9 in this procedure above).

  12. Under your name menu (top right-hand corner), click Sign out.

    Figure 24. Signing out

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, : Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels (1997).

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, Electronic Publishing Unit • 2018-08-01 • (other)