Office 365 for students

Microsoft™ Office 365 is a package of online services, including email, calendar, and OneDrive. It is now being provided free to Athabasca University students. As an AU student, you will also get several Microsoft™ Office licenses for your personal computers and devices, giving you free access to Microsoft™ products.

All undergraduate students, and most graduate students, should receive their account activation email within 2 business days of enrollment in an AU course.

You can attempt to activate your account here.

• If the account is ready, your new email address will be displayed after you set your password.
• If your account is not ready, you will get this error: "Error: We are unable to find your AU email account.

The activation email will include a link to a simple step-by-step account activation guide.

This error indicates you do not currently have an AU student Office 365 account. Please wait for your Office 365 welcome email before attempting to set your password. Please read the answer to "When will my student Office 365 account be ready?" for more information.

You have entered the domain incorrectly. The new domain is learn.athabascau.ca, not athabasca.edu

Once you activate your student Office 365 account, your primary Athabasca University email account will be set overnight to your new student email. From then on, Athabasca University system-generated messages will be sent to this email account. Your Athabasca University student union messages will also be delivered to this email address.

We encourage you to maintain this email address as your primary email address of record at Athabasca University and regularly check this account for messages. Your Athabasca University email address will be available throughout your studies at Athabasca University and therefore is your best means to make sure you are receiving important notifications from the University.

Today, most popular email clients allow you to set up and access multiple email accounts easily, and we recommend that you use this functionality as possible. Microsoft™ has instructions for setting up several popular mail clients on their support site, and you can use the search feature to find your preferred client. Microsoft™ Outlook, included with Office 365, also supports multiple email accounts. If, however, you would like to see your AU and student union messages in another account inbox, you can forward your student email account to your personal email account.

Note: if your current primary email address is an AU staff address, your primary address will not be changed to your new student address.

No. You will have one account for myAU and a separate account for Office 365.

Your email address is system generated and cannot be changed once it has been created. You can change your Office 365 display name by updating your name using this form:

Microsoft™ is responsible for all support for the Office 365 service. This support is primarily offered via their extensive support website.

You can sign into Office 365 here.

This message appears on Android devices the first time you connect to an Office 365 account, and we are unable to disable or change this message.

Athabasca University staff will not remotely manage a student's personal Android device.

If you want to set up your Android device without accepting these terms, you will need to set up your mail connection using IMAP rather than the default Exchange settings. Instructions can be found here.

Forwarding your AU student email account to a personal email address may result in not receiving messages from the university if your personal email address changes. Most popular email clients today allow you to set up and access multiple email accounts easily, and we, therefore, recommend that you use this functionality as possible.

However, you can find instruction here if you prefer to forward your student email to your personal account.

You can find instructions for downloading, installing or reinstalling Office 365 here.

You can find mobile device set up options here.

When you first signed in to your Office 365 account, you set password recovery options. Open the Office 365 sign-in page and click 'can't access your account?' under the 'sign in' button. You can also click here to open the page directly.

If you cannot reset your password with the instructions above, you can repeat the activation steps to reset your password. Note, repeating the activation steps will not change your primary email address. It will only reset your password. It may take a few minutes for the password change to sync to Office 365, so please be patient.

You can change your password recovery options here.

Office 365 has several password requirements. You can find more information here.

There are a few possibilities:

• You may have entered your email address incorrectly.
• If you just set your new password on the account activation page, it may take a couple of minutes before it works. Please wait a few minutes and try again.
• You may have forgotten your password. Remember, this password is separate from your password for myAU and Moodle, and it should be different. If this is the case, please read the answer to "I forgot my password, how do I reset it?"
• If your last course ended 18 or more months ago, and you have not completed an AU program, your account has probably been removed. Please read the answer to "How long will my account remain active?" for more information."
• Your account may have been compromised. If you think this is the case, please read the answer to "What happens if my account is compromised?"
• Microsoft may be experiencing technical issues. Please try again later.

There are a few possibilities:

• Microsoft is experiencing technical issues. Please try again later.
• f you recently changed your password and are using a mail client (app) on your mobile device or computer rather than the web page, you may need to upgrade the password stored in your mail client. If this is the case, you should still have the ability to send mail from the Office 365 Outlook web interface. Most mail clients will prompt for a new password automatically, but if this does not happen, you should check Microsoft's support website, or the support site of your device/application, for a solution.
• Your account may have been compromised. If you think this is the case, please read the answer to "What happens if my account is compromised?"

If your account is being used to send spam, a typical result of a third party compromising your account/password, the following actions will occur:

• Microsoft's automated system will lock your account so it can no longer send an email. In some cases, this lock will prevent you from logging in to Office 365 entirely.
• At a later time, typically within two business days, your password will be reset to a random value, and sending an email will be re-enabled.

If this happens, you will need to:

1. Reset your password using your recovery options. Please read the answer to "I forgot my password. How do I reset it?"
2. Reset your password on any other systems using the same password, and never use this compromised password again.
3. Check your settings and options in Office 365 to ensure none of them were changed. For example, away messages, mail filtering, and forwarding are sometimes changed.

Student accounts will remain active until about 18 months after your most recent course end date. Notifications will be sent to your account before this date. In the unlikely event, AU or Microsoft™ discontinues this offering. We will provide as much notice as possible.

After this time if you have:

Completed an AU program (certificate/diploma/degree)

• your account will be converted to an alumni license, which may have a significantly reduced set of software and services. Notifications will be sent to your account before this date.

Not completed an AU program (certificate/diploma/degree)

• your account will be deleted. Make sure you have downloaded and saved any documents, emails, files and other data you need before this happens, as we will not be able to provide any data from your account once it has been deleted. If you have registered for any other accounts with your student email address, make sure you update those accounts to your personal email address. Notifications will be sent to your account before this date.

You can keep your student email address if your situation meets one of these criteria:

• If you complete a program at AU. Your student account will be converted to an alumni account. Your email address will not change, but some features may no longer be available.
• If you enrol in another AU course before the account expiry date (18 months past your last course end date), you will maintain your AU Office 365 student account.

Due to the Microsoft™ 365 licensing terms, we are required to remove access to your account on this schedule, so any other form of extension is not an option.

Not at this time, but this may be offered at a future date, and we will let our alumni know should this become an option.