Setting up Outlook for the SCS IMAP Server
About
SCS Computing Facilities has recently deployed new IMAP services based on the latest version of the Cyrus IMAP server software from campus Computing Services. This document describes how to configure the Microsoft Outlook mail client to communicate with the new IMAP server, and how to move local Outlook mail to the IMAP server.
Note that before you can configure Outlook for the IMAP server, you must have a mailbox on the new server, and must have a .mail Kerberos instance. Contact SCS Computing Facilities Help Desk at 412-268-4231, or send mail to help@cs.cmu.edu to have a mailbox created on the IMAP server. If you do not already have a .mail Kerberos instance, see our instructions on how to create Kerberos instances.
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Configuring Outlook for the new IMAP Server
Configuring Microsoft Outlook for the SCS IMAP server involves using the "new account" wizard. Select the "Tools" menu item and the "E-mail Accounts" option. This will bring up a dialog box which allows you to add a new e-mail account, as seen here:
Select the "Add a new e-mail account" option and click the "Next" button to bring up the next page. This new page allows you to select the type of e-mail server you are adding:
As shown, select the "IMAP" server type and click the "Next" button to go on to the next page. On this page, you will enter several personal settings:
For "Your Name", enter your first and last name, as you would like to see it on your outgoing e-mail. For your "E-mail Address" setting, enter your preferred SCS e-mail address. This is normally your SCS userid, with an optional plus sign if necessary and the host name "cs.cmu.edu". For example, SCS user "foo" would most likely use the e-mail address "foo+@cs.cmu.edu".
The "Incoming mail server (IMAP)" should always be set to "imap.srv.cs.cmu.edu". The "Outgoing mail server (SMTP)" should be set to the machine "smtp.srv.cs.cmu.edu".
Under "Login Information", you should enter the "User Name" with your SCS account name (i.e. "foo" in the example above). If you prefer to have your e-mail password cached (that is, stored locally on your machine), you can check the "Remember password" box and enter the password for your .mail instance into the "Password" field. Note that this is insecure - anyone who can get onto your computer can then read your e-mail and send mail as you.
Click on the "More Settings" button and you will see this page:
On this page, the "Mail Account" represents a meaningful string that identifies the account to you. You can leave it as the default "imap.srv.cs.cmu.edu" or choose another setting. You can also set the "Organization" field, which is included in outgoing e-mail and identifies the organization or affiliation of your choice. Click on the "Advanced" tab for additional settings:
On this tab, click the "This server requires an SSL-secure connection". Click "OK" to confirm these changes, and then the "Next" button back on the main settings page to confirm all of your data. You will then see a "Success" page indicating that your account has been set up. You can click "Finished" to complete the process.
Moving Mail to the IMAP Server
Once your Outlook client has been set up to access the IMAP server, you can begin to move your existing mail to the new server. Typically, you will already have an e-mail account set up in IMAP, probably using the POP mail protocol to download mail from a server into local folders in your IMAP client. This means that the mail that you have already read is stored on your local machine.
While it is possible to use the IMAP service in a similar manner (that is, downloading your mail to your local machine) the real power of the IMAP service is available when you store all your mail, both read and unread, on the IMAP server. Storing all of your mail on the IMAP server has the following advantages:
- The IMAP server is maintained and backed up by SCS Computing Facilities, and is regularly monitored for errors.
- Your mail is accessible even if your desktop system is not available, crashes, or needs to be replaced.
- Mail on the IMAP server is available through the webmail interface at http://webmail.cs.cmu.edu (off-site link, will open in a new window).
- If you have a laptop or home computer, you can access your mail on the IMAP server the same way you do at your desk.
If you want to copy the folder "Test" from your local folders to the IMAP server, simply right-click on the folder "Test", and select the "Copy" operation from the pop-up menu. For the destination folder, select the "Inbox" folder under the "imap.srv.cs.cmu.edu" (or whatever you called it) account and click "OK". The folder "Test" and all of the contents will be copied to the IMAP server and will appear under "Inbox". Facilities suggests that you use the "copy" operation rather than the "move" operation so that you can verify that the folder and messages made it to the IMAP server correctly before removing the local folder.
If you want to move individual messages, you can simply select them from the local folder, right-click and select "copy" as above. You can use the "shift-click" operation to select more than one message to move, or you can use "Control-A" to select all messages in a folder.
Common Problems and Solutions
This section notes several problems that have been noticed during the conversion of Outlook users to the IMAP server. If you encounter a problem not noted here, please contact the SCS Computing Facilities Help Desk at 412-268-4231, or send mail to help@cs.cmu.edu.
Outlook asks you to confirm a security certificate when started
Because the IMAP server now supports SSL for secure connections between your client and the server, you may be presented with a dialog box when you start up Outlook:
You can click on the "Yes" button to continue with using Outlook. You can avoid this problem by downloading and installing the CMU web server certificate from this web site: https://www.cmu.edu/computing/downloads/certificates/ (off-site link, will open in a new window). On the middle of the page, there is a link to "Download the Carnegie Mellon Certificates". Right-click on this link and select the "Save target as". Select a location for the certificate file (your desktop, for example) and click "OK" to save the file.
When you have downloaded the file, double-click on it to bring up the certificate information page:
Click on the "Install Certificate..." button, and take all the defaults throughout the wizard. Once you are finished, the CMU root certificate will be installed on your machine and you will not get the "Internet Security Warning" dialog box any more.
Outlook hangs when moving large messages
Occasionally, when moving a large mail message (most likely with a large attachment), Outlook will stop responding for an extended period of time (several minutes) and then respond with an timeout error. SCS Computing Facilities is currently investigating this problem, which appears to be a particular interaction between Outlook and IMAP (other clients do not seem to exhibit this problem).
Currently, the best workaround to move the problem message to IMAP is to mail the offending message to yourself at the IMAP server.
'Invalid mailbox name' error
You cannot move folders with any "special" characters in it (slashes, brackets, shift+any number, question marks, etc.) If you try to move a folder containing any of these characters, you will receive the error message "Can't move the items. The server responded: 'Invalid mailbox name'. You can, however, create a folder directly on the IMAP server with most of those characters, and then move the messages from the local folder (containing those characters) to the folder on the IMAP server.
Users should rename any local folder with those characters before moving it.