When you leave Oxford, any OUCS-managed computer accounts will be deactivated. Before this happens, you can set your OUCS email account to forward your email to a new address. This will normally continue to work for two months.
For renewal of student club accounts, please see http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/registration/clubs/ .
1. Card Expiry Date
- your card has been cancelled by your college or department (this can happen if you resign or your contract expires before the expiry date shown on the card)
- your card shows Congregation status but you are no longer on the Register of Congregation (this can happen if you change department or college)
- your card has been renewed with a non-qualifying status, such as a Bodleian Readers Card.
Some limited facilities will be available after this date (see next section for full details):
2. Termination of Services
2.1. Single Sign-On (SSO)
- Change your password
- Set or change the forwarding for your University email address (see below).
- Access Student Self Service (OSS), Graduate Supervision System (GSS) via your SSO account. (For data from the undergraduate tutorial system OxCORT, contact College).
- receive a OUCS administrative emails, such as warnings of password expiry.
2.2. Nexus
You will NOT be able to access the Nexus services (including email) once your card expires. If you set up email forwarding BEFORE your card expires, your Nexus email will be delivered to your forwarding address for two months after card expiry.
The account will be deleted three months after card expiry. During the first two months of this period:
- Email will be delivered to your account unless you have taken action (see below) or until your quota is overfilled, but you will not be able to read these messages unless you have set up forwarding .
- Any forwarding setup will continue to function. .
- Any 'Out of Office Assistant' ( Vacation) will continue to function but you will not be able to update it.
- If neither a forwarding or vacation has been set up at card expiry, Nexus will set
a vacation (OOF) saying
This account is scheduled for deletion. It is unlikely that your message will be read.If you subsquently return, this message will be automatically removed.
In the final month of this period, no email forwarding will occur and no Out of Office messages will be sent. Email sent to your mailbox will bounce with a general system message returned to the sender. Once deleted your mailbox data are kept on tape for a short time.
2.3. Remote Access
Remote Access accounts are deleted promptly after the card expiry date. If you subsequently become eligible for an account again, you can re-register.
2.4. Web space
Any personal web space will be unavailable once your card expires and deleted two months after card expiry. During this period:
- Anyone visiting your pages will see the response The requested URL was not found on this server.
- You will not be able to update your web pages.
- Your web pages have not been deleted and will become accessible again if the account is renewed.in that time and you re-request web access
2.5. Linux account
Any Linux account will be deleted two months after card expiry. During this period:
- You will not be able to log in for interactive computing or access to your files, so any material of permanent value should be copied elsewhere before your card expiry date.
- You will not be able to access your files through other means such as scp.
- Your files have not been deleted and will become accessible again if the account is renewed in that time and you re-request linux access
2.6. College or Departmental facilities
Where access to local services is controlled by your Oxford Single Sign-On account, this will usually terminate when your card expires. Please check with the provider of the local service if you have any queries - OUCS does not hold any information about non-OUCS services.
3. Email management
You can arrange diversion of your University email address to a new service for an overlap period. Your full range of options is given below.
3.1. No action
If you take no action, email will continue to be delivered to your mailbox. Senders may receive a message saying that the mailbox is about to be deleted, but you will not be aware of, or be able to reach, these messages.
3.2. No new address
If you have no replacement email service (e.g. if you are going abroad immediately after leaving Oxford), you can set an automatic Out of Office (also known as an OOF or vacation reply) to advise email senders that you cannot receive their messages. This could include details of alternative ways to contact you.
To set up an automatic reply, use Out of Office Assistant in Outlook Web Access or Outlook Web Access Light. You will not be able to update your messages or date range after your card expiry date.
3.3. Kill your email
If your email is routed to a Nexus account and you wish to disable your email addresses promptly, please save any material you want to retain, then email registration@oucs.ox.ac.uk to request immediate blocking of your account. Once this is done, any email to your University addresses will fail and the sender will know that you have not received it.
3.4. Non-OUCS email
If you want to redirect or terminate your email and it is on a different service within the University, please check computing information published by the relevant department or college. OUCS does not have detailed information on these services.
If clear instructions are not available, you may need to make direct contact with the system administrator for the service.
3.5. Forwarding Oxford Nexus email to a new address
If you arrange email redirection to a new address (see below), it is important that people start to use the new address before the end of the overlap period. For the first month or so of using your new email address, we suggest you create a conspicuous signature file drawing attention to the change. This means you do not have to type it out in every message. Watch the "To" address on any incoming messages - if people continue to give the old Oxford address, they are probably using an address book, and need an extra nudge to update their entry for you.
3.5.1. Forwarding
You are strongly advised to arrange a new external email facility at least a month before your University Card expires (to allow time for sorting out any problems).
Email forwarding from Oxford Nexus usually continues for two months after your University Card expires, unless other arrangements have been made.
Forwarding, as described below, will remain operational until your account is actually deleted. This will be two months after the project time expires.
Note that this only re-routes new incoming messages to your new address. Messages you have already received will not be processed (see 4.1. Email saving and/or copying).
For an Oxford Nexus mailbox, follow the instructions in the Change Nexus mailbox settings section of the self-registration page, and enter your alternative email address. Please use the self-registration page for this and not an email client program, to ensure that the forwarding is set on the server.
Note that junk mail will be forwarded, but it will be handled according to your new email program's own setup.
3.5.2. Setting forwarding with an Out of Office automatic reply
It is possible to combine the setting of a forwarding address with an Out of Office automatic reply to notify correspondents automatically that a new address should be used to contact you.
- See Forwarding above for
setting an Out of Office automatic reply. Specify yes to
[Save local copy]option otherwise the automatic reply will not be triggered. Care should be taken to ensure enough free space in the mailbox as your quota could overflow (the quota warning messages would not necessarily be forwarded to you). - See No new address above for setting an Out of Office automatic reply. Your message should make it clear that the message has been forwarded and they need not re-send it to your new address.
3.6. Redirection
If you have an Oxford Nexus account and your University Card has not yet expired, please follow Forwarding above. The redirection option described here is not offered to students because of the large numbers involved every year.
Staff and visitors can email to registration@oucs.ox.ac.uk to advise a new email address. Redirection can be set up independently of any University account. Re-routing will start within five hours of the request being processed and will continue for two months after your completion date. When you email Registration to request re-routing, please do it from your Nexus account or from the address set for forwarding in your Nexus account or from your registered alternative email address. For messages from other addresses, additional validation of identity would be requested before re-routing could be set.
OUCS can NOT change routing for addresses in the domains listed below. For these
domains, please follow any local documentation, or in cases of difficulty contact the
Postmaster (postmaster@unit.ox.ac.uk).
4. Material stored in your OUCS accounts
You may wish to preserve email messages or other files stored in your Oxford University accounts. Possible alternative methods are listed below. This needs to be done before your card expiry date.
If you have your own personal computer, files can be saved direct to your hard disk. Otherwise, you can copy to external disk media. The size limit per disk is approximately 1200 Kb for floppy disk, 650Mb for CD and 4.5Gb for DVD. In the case of CD and DVD on Windows, you will need to complete the copying process using the Write these files task when you have dealt with all the relevant files. Before relying on the saved copy, you should check the disk by opening it via My Computer.
For help on use of the basic file copying facilities in this section, please contact college or departmental IT support staff, or the OUCS Help Centre.
It is the user's responsibility to secure any material before the card expiry date.
4.1. Email saving and/or copying
4.1.1. General considerations
If you have a new email service, set forwarding to it in your email account before starting to process your stored files, otherwise new messages may arrive and not be saved.
Some email services may have a smaller space limit than OUCS services, so you might need to use the email saving methods to preserve your less active folders. This is also a safety net against accidental loss of the messages on any new system you use.
Take special care, when transferring individual messages to a new service, to check that they have all arrived. Commercial services, particularly the free ones, will not necessarily give an error reply if a delivery fails, so you must check positively that each one has arrived safely and also check to ensure it has not been sent to a junk or spam area.
4.1.2. Using an Email client on your own computer
Use an IMAP email client (e.g. Outlook Express, Thunderbird, Mac Mail) to transfer or copy folders from Nexus to local folders on your client system. If you are setting up a client for the first time, configuration information is available at http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/nexus/email/clients.xml. Check that the folders are still accessible when your computer is not connected to the network.
Note that in Microsoft Outlook, local folders are created under the 'Personal Folders' heading of your folder list.
The local folders will only be accessible using the same email client program, but you could also use it to load them back to a new IMAP server elsewhere so that they can be accessed by any client.
This method is also applicable to non-OUCS systems which use IMAP.
4.2. Web space
There are four possible ways of copying your web pages:
- For a small simple site, browse your web pages and save copies of pages and images using your browser's Save As facility.
- Use a standard FTP client to transfer folders from the server to your client system. Windows-oriented programs such as WS_FTP or Internet Explorer will usually allow you to transfer the entire site in a single operation. For maximum portability, HTML files should be copied as ASCII, and images (.jpg, .gif, etc) as binary.
- Mount the web space to your PC and copy the files back to disk using normal file copy operations.
- Web space is accessible from your Linux account and can be copied using the methods recommended for Linux files.
5. External references and ongoing projects
If you have registered your first.last@unit.ox.ac.uk email address
or your http://users.ox.ac.uk/~username web URL with an external
agency, or you have them advertised in some permanent way, these references must be
changed and you must arrange this before your project time expires.
If others will be continuing your work, please ensure that web pages and other files are transferred to an appropriate colleague or member of staff before you leave. OUCS regards your files as private property and it causes inconvenience to your successors if you have not made proper arrangements in advance. If there is a non-personal account, you or your IT Officer can transfer the ownership without special formality by contacting OUCS Registration, otherwise the account will be deleted as normal when you leave.
Note that if you have an alumni email address and you have routed it to your Nexus account (or a college or departmental account) then you will need to re-route it to an external service before your University account is terminated. You need to do this yourself using the alumni email web pages.
6. Alumni Email
The Alumni Email Forwarding Service is for Oxford University Alumni. It is not available to other staff or visitors. When you leave Oxford your Oxford e-mail address will expire, but you do not have to lose contact with your Oxford colleagues. It provides an Oxford-based email address for life, which, so long as you keep your record up to date, will forward email to your chosen email account. It is free and it includes anti-virus checking and spam scoring, but you will need to set up your own e-mail account with a service provider of your choice so that the Oxford e-mail forwarding service can send your mail there. If you are already registered, and temporarily forwarding your alumni address to your Nexus account, you must get a new account and update your forwarding before the University account expires.
All alumni are now entitled to use the service, but an alumni card is needed before you can register. Leavers should receive a card during Trinity Term, together with information from the Alumni Office. If you have not received an Alumni Card, please complete the online form
The email addresses will be in the form: jo.smith@thiscollege.oxon.org
(i.e. <firstname>.<lastname> @
<college>.oxon.org). For members of the service, all names, colleges, and
years of matriculation will be searchable but there will be an ex-directory option for
those who wish to remain private.
More information is available via the Alumni Office website. This includes a helpline email address. Please do not contact OUCS regarding the alumni email forwarding service.
Graduates in Business Studies should consult their own alumni association.
7. Returning to Oxford
If you return to having valid status within the University at a later date, you will be entitled to facilities according to your new status, but we cannot guarantee that your previous account names, files, messages and web pages will be available.
8. College or Departmental services
Please enquire locally regarding local email or network services - OUCS will not be able to help with these queries.
9. TSM
If you have your desktop or any other computers registered for TSM backup, or you are the contact for error messages on any TSM node, please email us at registration@oucs.ox.ac.uk if your backups are no longer required. If the files will continue to be used after you leave, please email us or ask your IT officer to contact us when the new owner has been arranged.