Migrating to Office 365

Migration Schedule

The SSCC's email server has now been shut down. If you were still relying on your SSCC email account, contact the Help Desk and we'll find out if you can be migrated to Office 365. We have worked very hard to ensure no email user is left behind in this migration. At this point we believe everyone who is eligible to migrate has been migrated, and those who are not eligible are not relying on SSCC email. If that's not the case, let us know and we'll help you as best we can.

Since everyone who was set up for migration was migrated, you'll need to contact the Help Desk before following the rest of these instructions so we can set up your account to be migrated (if possible).

Migrating Your Account

While you'll be able to read new mail and send messages very quickly after you migrate, moving all your mail may take several hours or more. You may want to start the migration process right before you leave work or right before you go to bed on the day before you plan to migrate.

Forwards

If you have your WiscMail account forwarded to your SSCC account or vice versa, you don't need to change them. After migrating, all mail sent to either address will go to your Office 365 Inbox.

If you have your SSCC email forwarded to a non-UW address, this will not carry over to Office 365. However, if you have your WiscMail address forwarded to a non-UW address, this will carry over to Office 365 and all mail sent to any of your Office 365 addresses (NetID@wisc.edu, username@ssc.wisc.edu, or firstname.lastname@wisc.edu) will be forwarded to that address. If you want all your UW mail to be sent to a non-UW address, set that forward in WiscMail before migrating.

Migrating

To initiate the migration process, click here, log in with your NetID, and click on the "Start Transition" button.

For more details read Starting Your Migration to Office 365.

Once the migration process has started, wait at least 15 minutes before you attempt to access your mail using the Outlook Web App. After that, you are welcome to read and send mail even though all your mail may not have been migrated yet. The amount of time required to move your mail will depend on your mailbox size, but estimates range from 30 minutes to several days.

Within your Office 365 account you'll see at least two folders: NetID@wisc.edu and username@ssc.wisc.edu. It's very important that you not move or delete messages or subfolders within these folders until you get a message in your new Office 365 Inbox saying that the migration process is complete for that account. Mail moved during the migration process may be lost and is not recoverable.

Each of those folders will have a subfolder called Inbox. These contain the mail that was in that account's Inbox before migrating. However, new mail will be delivered to your Office 365 Inbox, which will be at the top of your folder list.

You may want to move the subfolders you use out of these account folders, but do so after the migration is complete. You are free to move or delete new messages in your Office 365 Inbox right away.

It is possible that a small number of your SSCC messages will not successfully migrate to Office 365. We will email you a list of these messages and place them in your Z: drive, as we did with messages that were too large to migrate.

Using Your Office 365 Email After Migration

Once you migrate, email programs that were set up to read SSCC email no longer work and will need to be reconfigured for Office 365. The Outlook Web App does not require any configuration, so you can start using it just 15 minutes after you migrate. For more information on using the Outlook Web App, please see DoIT's OWA Mail Overview.

In general, when configuration programs ask for your email address you should enter the primary address you selected, which could be username@ssc.wisc.edu. However, when they ask for your username you need to give your WiscMail address, NetID@wisc.edu. If you are asked whether the WiscMail web site should be allowed to configure your server settings, click Allow.

Configuring Email Programs:

Thunderbird does not work well with Office 365 and we strongly suggest Windows users switch to Outlook 2013 and Mac users switch to Apple Mail or Outlook 2016.

If you've been using Outlook 2010 to read SSCC email, you'll probably like Outlook 2013 better with Office 365 (upgrade instructions).

Configuring Mobile Devices:

Additional client configuration options may be found here.

If you are having trouble locating any mail after migration, please see Where Can I Find My Migrated Mail in Office 365?

More Things You Might Do After Migrating

Import your Email Contacts (Address Book) to Office 365
Email Forwards and Office 365
Add an Email Signature in Office 365
Set Up Mail Filters/Rules (https://webmail.ssc.wisc.edu/filter/ has an ‘Office 365 Migration View’ that makes it easy to recreate the filters you had on the SSCC’s email server as rules in Office 365. If you plan to reorganize your folders after all your mail has been migrated, wait until that's done to set up rules that use them.)
Set your Preferred Name (so it doesn't show up in ALL CAPS)
Remove Your Old Account From Clients and Devices
Change your Primary Email Address
Additional Steps to take if you Changed your Primary Email Address

Learning to Use Office 365

DoIT regularly offers free training sessions on Office 365. Fo details visit OHRD's web site. They also provide online, self-paced training called Learn to Use Office 365 for the Outlook Web App and all versions of the Outlook client.

To learn more about the SSCC's migration to Office 365, read our Office 365 FAQ.

Last Revised: 11/30/2015