The froshpeople seem to have gotten the hang of things already, but you old fogies who still use CubMail directly are in for a rude awakening. Over the last few weeks, CUIT has been shuffling your shit in preparation for the move to Columbia’s new Google-powered platform, LionMail, on July 31st. That’s tomorrow. To avoid adding one more headache to your weekday hangover, here’s what you need to know come morning:

  • As many of you who have already evolved beyond the troglodytic CubMail likely already noticed, Gmail users can no longer use their UNI as an alternate e-mail address.
  • In a similar vein, those of you sneaky enough to have created a UNI@columbia.edu personal Google account will have encountered the conflicting account alert some time in the last few weeks.
  • Any e-mails larger than 25MB were not transferred to LionMail. To move any such monolithic messages to LionMail, sort your CubMail inbox by message size and forward them to yourself tomorrow!
  • If you want to set up LionMail access on your mobile device or an external client, you’ll need a special device password (distinct from your UNI password). CUIT has prepared step-by-step instructions for configuring most popular mobile and e-mail client platforms.
  • Though LionMail will give you access to a university wide directory of UNIs, CubMail address book entries with multiple contacts will not be copied to your LionMail address book. To re-create them, copy the e-mail addresses into a text file and then paste them into a new contact group in LionMail.
  • LionMail comes with the incredibly powerful Google Calendar; check out CUIT’s introduction to the system, including how to import your New CourseWorks schedule (!!!)
  • Obviously undergraduates without prior access won’t be able to log-in until tomorrow, but the link for your bookmarks is the ever-straightforward lionmail.columbia.edu and sign-in is with your UNI and UNI password. If you really want the user manual for first-time login, check out CUIT’s guide.
If you’re wondering what the big stinking deal with LionMail is compared to your exquisitely orchestrated system of filters and labels in Gmail, take a look at this hardly-convincing table. There is a similar table on the advantages of LionMail over the derelict CubMail, though you probably don’t need any convincing on that front.