UNSW Exchange Email Service

UNSW Exchange and Cloud Email (Office365)

From the Email resources for Staff page:
The UNSW Exchange Email [provides] a single, secure email system for staff of UNSW. The service is available to UNSW staff (including casual, visiting, contract, emeriti, conjoint and adjunct staff) and postgraduate research students (PhD and Masters by research).
Please note:

Configuring Email Clients

UNSW Email server supports both Exchange protocol (EWS) and IMAP/SMTP protocol.

Apple Mail and Microsoft Outlook natively support Exchange protocol (EWS), it is then preferred to configure it via Exchange protocol.

Below are the basic values you need to configure email software to access the UNSW Exchange service. For further explanation see the UNSW IT page on configuring email clients. Once you have have configured your email client, try sending yourself an email at your UNSW email address.

Web Access

You can access your UNSW email account via most popular web browsers.

Outlook Web App URL: https://mail.unsw.edu.au

Exchange Protocol (EWS)

Server exchange.ad.unsw.edu.au
Username ADUNSW\Your zID
Email Address Your official UNSW email address

IMAP and SMTP Protocol

Server mail.unsw.edu.au
Username Your zID
Encryption/Security IMAP: SSL or SSL/TLS
SMTP: StartTLS
Port IMAP: 993
SMTP: 587
Authentication Method IMAP: "Normal Password"
SMTP: "Normal Password"
Email Address Your official UNSW email address
Reply-To Your official UNSW email address

See also settings for Office 365 Email.

Changing existing UNSW Exchange Account to Office 365 in Apple Mail Setting for non-SOE (Advanced)

Apple Mail does not allow users to change their username setup for an existing mailbox in Apple Mail from the interface.

Thus, pointing your existing UNSW Exchange account in Apple Mail to the new Cloud Email(Office365) server cannot be done through Mail Preferences Interface without deleting and re-creating the account.

However it is possible to change these locked Apple Mail settings from Mail Property List file.

The benefits of changing these settings instead of creating mail account from scratch include minimising message downtime by saving Apple Mail from having to re-download all emails from the server, retaining all local account preferences including signature, messages flags and other local metadata.

Editing accounts.plist for Apple Mail

This section explains how to change Apple Mail account settings from .plist file, it is recommended for advanced Mac users only.

  • Quit all Apple Mail processes
  • From Finder, go to ~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/
  • Locate Accounts.plist in the directory, open it with TextWrangler, Xcode or your favourite text editor
  • All email accounts are listed under MailAccounts section
  • Locate your existing UNSW Exchange account section on the list. If you set up your UNSW Exchange in the correct way (via Exchange protocol), the AccountType for this account will be EWSAccount (as Screenshot-1)
  • Locate the values for ExternalHostname and Hostname, change them from mail.unsw.edu.au to outlook.office365.com (as Screenshot-1)
  • Screenshot-1:
  • Change LastUsedAutodiscoverURL value from https://autodiscover.unsw.edu.au/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml to https://autodiscover-s.outlook.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml(as Screenshot-2)
  • Change Username value from your zID to zID@ad.unsw.edu.au (as Screenshot-2)
  • Screenshot-2:
  • Save all the changes, and Quite the editor
  • Relaunch Apple Mail, it will prompt you to ask for your zPass

Known issue

Outlook 2010 for Windows

In some rare cases, Outlook 2010(Windows) will repeatedly prompt for credential during configuration. If this happens, please make sure your Office 2010 is patched with the up-to-date Service Pack

More information please refer to Official documentation. Description of Office 2010 Service Pack 2

Additional/Generic Exchange Account - shared mailbox & calendar

Generic shared Mailbox and Calendar on Exchange are possible to set up by submitting an Online Access form for Special Purpose Account (OSA05) form.

The form can be downloaded via: https://www.it.unsw.edu.au/staff/forms/docs/OSA_05.pdf

See: Accessing UNSW Exchange Shared Calendar

Last edited by robertd 04/05/2016

Tags for this page:

Exchange, email, OWA