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Microsoft 365 - Getting Started with Microsoft 365

A document will guide you through some of the common features within Office 365 that will help you start using and interacting with your Office 365 account.

What is a Microsoft Exchange account?

A Microsoft Exchange account is a work or school email account. When you use an Exchange account, your email messages are delivered to and saved in your mailbox on the Exchange server. Your contacts and calendar are saved there, too. Learn more.

Account Management

UW-Madison faculty, staff, and students are eligible for an Office 365 email account. This account is created when your NetID is activated (or when you activate missing services on your NetID account) and has a default email address of NetID@wisc.edu.

  • For faculty/staff, affiliation is managed by HR Office.

  • For students, affiliation is managed by Registrars Office. If you are an incoming fall student, you should be able to create your Office 365 account by activating your NetID account.

Note: If you are looking to use an Office 365 Service Account, please contact your domain administrator or DoIT Help Desk.

A new naming convention for email addresses is being introduced to provide consistency across the university, and to reap the benefits of brand recognition by using addresses that are easily identifiable as a UW-Madison entity. When your Office 365 account is activated (in the form of NetID@wisc.edu), you will have the option to add another email address in the form of first.lastname@wisc.edu. All faculty/staff are required to reserve a firstname.lastname@wisc.edu email address. It is available to students, however it is not required. This account will be added to your Office 365 account (NetID@wisc.edu) as an alternate address, not affecting any of your old settings or emails.

To reserve or change your firstame.lastname address, refer to Microsoft 365 - Activate or change your firstname.lastname@wisc.edu address.

Upon activation within Office 365, your primary address is your NetID@wisc.edu. After you have reserved your first.last email address, you can choose this new address to be your primary address within Office 365. Note: the primary address will be the only address that will be visible (searchable) in the Office 365 Global Address List. Although an account in Office 365 can have multiple email addresses, each account has only one "primary address".

To change your primary address, refer to Microsoft 365 - Change your Primary Address.

Accessing Your Account

Any recommended browser (Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Safari) can be used to access your Office 365 account. Microsoft's Office 365 web client is called Outlook Web access. It can be accessed via https://email.wisc.edu/.

The recommended/supported desktop/mobile client is Microsoft Outlook. To configure your account, refer to Microsoft 365 - Setup/configure Outlook on mobile device or desktop computer.

Additional Account Options

Inbox rules/filters help reduce clutter in your Inbox, which allow you to focus on items that are important to you. Refer to Microsoft 365 (Outlook on the web | Outlook for Windows/MacOS) - Using Inbox Rules. In addition, you can take advantage of additional tools/apps to manage your account data.

You now have the ability to set your pronouns for your UW-Madison Microsoft 365 account. See Microsoft documentation.

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Keywordsmicrosoft office365 o365 m365 microsoft 365 first last name first.last clients how tos configure install filters email inbox rules reserve address primary account alternates accessing pronouns   Doc ID57889
OwnerO365 S.GroupMicrosoft 365
Created2015-10-30 14:41:59Updated2023-08-08 09:38:34
SitesDoIT Help Desk, Microsoft 365
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