Tips for using Outlook as your email and calendar service
From: Division of Information Technology
Welcome back, students! As you know, Virginia Tech student email and calendar services have moved from Gmail to Microsoft Exchange Online.
While some of you may already be familiar with Exchange Online’s Outlook app, this is a big change for those of you who’ve used Gmail for years. Here are a few things to know:
- To access your Virginia Tech email, go to my.office365.vt.edu. Log in with your VT email address and passphrase and go to the Outlook app. Your email and calendar data are in there. Go here for help accessing Exchange Online on different devices.
- Emails that were in your Gmail inbox and your Google Calendar events are now in your Outlook inbox and calendar, respectively. Nothing in Gmail Trash was migrated.
- You still have a Google account through Virginia Tech. Your Google Drive and tools including Docs, Sheets, Slides, etc. are still available. You can access these at drive.google.com when logged into your VT account.
- In Google , the Gmail and Calendar apps have been turned off, as well as the Photos app. You will no longer see these in your Google account “waffle.”
- If you used labels in Gmail, things will look a little different in Outlook. Labeled email was put into folders, which serve a function similar to Gmail’s labels. Note that Exchange Online only allows an email to be sorted into one folder. In the migration, your email will have been sorted into folders corresponding with the first label retrieved during migration of each message.
- Keep an eye on your junk folder. Your new Outlook mailbox needs time and training to 'learn' to correctly identify legitimate email vs. junk email. Check your junk folder frequently, and mark emails that are legitimate (i.e., coming from a Virginia Tech department or sender you know) as ‘not junk.' This will help Outlook better sort your mail, and keep you in the loop for responses and opportunities that are important for you. Even if you don’t want to respond or take action on a specific message, if it is from a known sender it is better to mark it ‘not junk’ so that future emails you really do need make it to your inbox.
We understand that for many of you, using Exchange Online for email and calendars will take some getting used to. Here are some resources that may help:
- Accessing Your Virginia Tech Exchange Online Account
- Sharing an Exchange Online Calendar
- Viewing Another Person's Exchange Calendar
- How to Schedule a Meeting on Microsoft 365 (Teams, Outlook)
- Using Outlook: LinkedIn Learning video series
More resources are available here. You can find complete information about changes to student email and Google services on our website. For individual assistance, please contact 4Help.