E-mail Services

E-mail accounts are provided to all members of the campus community.

Campus e-mail can be accessed in the public labs on campus or anywhere you have access to a web browser. Login to the BearMail web client at http://bearmail.potsdam.edu using your CCA. It can also be accessed by using any traditional e-mail client that supports IMAP or POP.

File attachment size is limited to 7MB on the campus server. For large attachments you may wish to link to the file in either your www2 personal space, an FTP site, or the campus CMS.

Alumni e-mail accounts are available. Please visit http://www.potsdam.edu/alumni for more information. Please note the Alumni Relations Office handles all alumni e-mail support issues.

E-mail Clients

Computing & Technology Services supports only the following email clients and only on SUNY Potsdam owned computers/devices: Mail.app (Mac OS X), Thunderbird (Windows), iPhone/iPod Touch, and legacy SmartPhones by PalmOne. For Mail.app, Thunderbird, and iPhone/iPod Touch, see the instructions to the right.

For other clients see the link to the right called "General Email Client Settings."

More Information

  • Return Receipt: Some email clients support a feature called "return receipt". When a supported email client receives the email sent, an automatic reply is emailed back to the sender indicating the message was received. Many web based email clients and several traditional email clients do not support this! Further, the clients that do have this as an option require that it be enabled as it is "off" by default. Return receipts are not a reliable means to determine that a message was received and should not be trusted!
  • Periods (.) In Folders: Do not make folder names with periods in them. Most email servers read a . as the start of a new directory. It's best to use just letters and numbers for email Folder names and forgo the use of symbols and punctuation characters.
  • E-mail Is Not An Instantaneous Service: While many times e-mail is delivered within seconds or minutes of being sent, large amounts of email being delivered, spammer attacks, or other factors will cause a delay in delivery that can be as much as a hour in severe situations. In other words, the Mailman can only sort mail so fast into your mailbox. You can check the number of messages in our local queue via our Network Blog. This is only applicable for SUNY Potsdam e-mail waiting to be delivered, if you've sent a message to someone that doesn't have an @potsdam.edu address, delivery is out of our control.
  • Multiple Accounts: If you use email client software that supports multiple email accounts such as Mail.app or Thunderbird and you plan to make use of both your non-SUNY Potsdam address and your SUNY Potsdam address you might want to configure a message rule for each account so that mail will be delivered in separate mailboxes to easily tell which account they came from. You should consult the documentation for your email client software on how to do this.