Overview
Students, faculty, and staff at Texas A&M University may have several email addresses and email accounts. The differences between these addresses and accounts can be confusing.
Information
Basic Definitions
An email account is an account that receives and stores email.
An email address is an address that directs email to a specific email account.
An email alias is an email address that is named differently from, but behaves identically to, the default email address.
Default accounts
Texas A&M provides all students with an email account via Texas A&M Gmail. This account is the official school email account for all students, and it can be accessed at https://email.tamu.edu/ using your Texas A&M NetID and NetID password. The default email address for this email account is NetID@email.tamu.edu. Email sent to the NetID@email.tamu.edu address will be received by and stored in the Texas A&M Gmail account.
Most Texas A&M staff are provided a Texas A&M Exchange account. This account is accessed at https://exchange.tamu.edu/ using your Texas A&M NetID and NetID password. The default email address for this email account is NetID@exchange.tamu.edu. Email sent to the NetID@exchange.tamu.edu address will be received by and stored in the Texas A&M Exchange account.
It is not uncommon for a student, staff, or faculty member to have both a Texas A&M Gmail account and a Texas A&M Exchange account. For individuals with both account, it is important to know that email sent to each respective account is not available when logging into and checking the other account.
Email addresses
Texas A&M provides a short email address to all faculty, staff, and students in the form of NetID@tamu.edu. The default behavior of this address is to forward to either their Exchange account or their Gmail account, whichever was created first. For most students, this will be their Texas A&M Gmail account, and for most employees, this will be their Texas A&M Exchange account.
In addition to the default NetID@tamu.edu email address, you are also able to claim up to two additional email aliases. These aliases can be used to set up email filters or to provide an alternate email address for different purposes. Email aliases will behave identically to the NetID@tamu.edu email address, including where the address forwards email.
Forwarding and Filtering
Information on forwarding your NetID@tamu.edu email to an email address can be found in article KB0011912.
Information on forwarding your NetID@exchange.tamu.edu email can be found in article KB0015650.
Information on forwarding your NetID@email.tamu.edu email can be found in article KB0010401.
Information on filtering your Exchange email can be found in article KB0015541.
Information on filtering your Gmail email can be found in article KB0015683.
Examples
Example 1
Mr. Aggie Man is a newly hired employee at Texas A&M University. During the new employee process, he claims the NetID aggieman2019, and he is provisioned a Texas A&M Exchange account. Mr. Aggie Man now has:
- One email account - Exchange
- Two email addresses
- aggieman2019@exchange.tamu.edu - Email sent to this address is received by and stored in Mr. Aggie Man's Exchange account at https://exchange.tamu.edu.
- aggieman2019@tamu.edu - Email sent to this address is forwarded to Mr. Aggie Man's Exchange account where it will be received and stored.
Example 2
Jane Aggie has enrolled in classes at Texas A&M University, and claimed the NetID janeaggie2019. Because Jane Aggie is a student, she is provisioned a Texas A&M Gmail account. Jane now has:
- One email account - Texas A&M Gmail
- Two email addresses
- janeaggie2019@email.tamu.edu - Email sent to this address is received by and stored in Jane Aggie's Texas A&M Gmail account at https://email.tamu.edu/.
- janeaggie2019@tamu.edu - Email sent to this address is forwarded to Jane's Texas A&M Gmail account where it will be received and stored.
Example 3
Tommy Ag is a student at Texas A&M. They claimed the NetID tommyag2019, and they have their Texas A&M Gmail account, and their tommyag2019@tamu.edu email address. They are hired as a student worker by Technology Services. They are given a Texas A&M Exchange account as part of their employment. Tommy now has:
- Two email accounts
- Texas A&M Gmail
- Texas A&M Exchange
- Three email addresses
- tommyag2019@email.tamu.edu - Email sent to this address is received by and stored in Tommy's Texas A&M Gmail account at https://email.tamu.edu/.
- tommyag2019@tamu.edu - Email sent to this address is forwarded to Tommy's Texas A&M Gmail account where it will be received and stored.
- tommyag2019@exchange.tamu.edu - Email sent to this address is received by and stored in Tommy's Exchange account at https://exchange.tamu.edu.
Example 4
Aaron Aggie is a student at Texas A&M and is employeed by Transportation Services. Aaron's NetID is aaronaggie2019. Aaron has the same email account and email address configuration as Tommy Ag in Example 3. However, Aaron want to keep his student email and his work email separate, so he creates the email alias aaronaggiework19@tamu.edu. Aaron can then configure an email rule in his Texas A&M Gmail account to automatically forward any email sent to aaronaggiework19@tamu.edu to be forwarded to his Texas A&M Exchange account. His email account and addresses situation is now:
- Two email accounts
- Texas A&M Gmail
- Texas A&M Exchange
- Six email addresses
- aaronaggie2019@email.tamu.edu - Email sent to this address is received by and stored in Aaron's Texas A&M Gmail account at https://email.tamu.edu/.
- aaronaggiework19@email.tamu.edu - Email sent to this address is received by and stored in Aaron's Texas A&M Gmail account at https://email.tamu.edu/.
- aaronaggie2019@exchange.tamu.edu - Email sent to this address is received by and stored in Aaron's Exchange account at https://exchange.tamu.edu.
- aaronaggiework19@exchange.tamu.edu - Email sent to this address is received by and stored in Aaron's Exchange account at https://exchange.tamu.edu.
- aaronaggie2019@tamu.edu - Email sent to this address is forwarded to Aaron's Texas A&M Gmail account where it will be received and stored.
- aaronaggiework19@tamu.edu - Email sent to this address is forwarded to Aaron's Texas A&M Gmail account. However, an email rule that Aaron configured will see that the email was sent to the address aaronaggiework19@tamu.edu and immediately forward the email to his aaronaggie2019@exchange.tamu.edu email account.
In this example, Aaron is able to use an email alias to keep work-related email out of his student email account.
Example 5
Nikki Ag (no relation to Tommy Ag in Example 3) is an employee of the College of Engineering who has enrolled in classes. She has claimed the NetID nikkiag2019, and has two email aliases. She has the email alias nikkieagschool@tamu.edu which she uses to separate student email from work email as in Example 4 above, but she also has the alias nikkiagspam@tamu.edu. She uses this email alias when signing up for free service trials or filling out online survey responses. She has configured an email rule to filter all email sent to that address into a specific email folder for review and probable deletion. Her email account and address situation is:
- Two email accounts
- Texas A&M Gmail
- Texas A&M Exchange
- Nine email addresses
- nikkiag2019@tamu.edu - Email sent to this address is forwarded to Nikki's Texas A&M Exchange account where it will be received and stored.
- nikkiag2019@email.tamu.edu - Email sent to this address is received by and stored in Nikki's Texas A&M Gmail account at https://email.tamu.edu/.
- nikkiag2019@exchange.tamu.edu - Email sent to this address is received by and stored in Nikki's Exchange account at https://exchange.tamu.edu.
- nikkieagschool@tamu.edu - Email sent to this address is forwarded to Nikki's Texas A&M Exchange account where an email filter Nikki created will forward all email sent to nikkiagschool@tamu.edu to her nikkiag2019@email.tamu.edu email account.
- nikkieagschool@email.tamu.edu - Email sent to this address is received by and stored in Nikki's Texas A&M Gmail account at https://email.tamu.edu/.
- nikkieagschool@exchange.tamu.edu - Email sent to this address is received by Nikki's Texas A&M Exchange account where an email filter Nikki created will forward all email sent to nikkiagschool@tamu.edu to her nikkiag2019@email.tamu.edu email account.
- nikkiagspam@tamu.edu - Email sent to this address is forwarded to Nikki's Texas A&M Exchange account, where it will be received and filtered by an email rule that marks the message as probable spam and tags it so that Nikki can review or delete it later.
- nikkiagspam@email.tamu.edu - Email sent to this address is received by Nikki's Gmail account,where it will be filtered by an email rule that marks the message as probable spam and moves it to a folder where Nikki can review or delete it later.
- nikkiagspam@exchange.tamu.edu - Email sent to this address is received by Nikki's Exchange account where it will be filtered by an email rule that marks the message as probable spam and moves it to a folder where Nikki can review or delete it later.