Creating, deleting, and renaming listservs

Complete and submit the Northwestern Listserv Application Form to establish a new listserv. Once the application is approved, we will process and create the Listserv for you. If you need to be one of the owners of the Listserv, please add your email as the owners as well. Requester is not always automatically be one of the owners unless it was specified during request. 

The application will ask you a number of questions regarding list attributes, which affect how a list operates. Consider your answers to these questions carefully when you fill out the application. While you should give serious thought to list attributes when filling out the application, these attributes can be changed at a later time.

Once your electronic application has been processed, you will receive an email message indicating that your list is ready for use. As a list owner, you are not automatically subscribed to your list. You should subscribe yourself to your list immediately to check that the list is operating correctly and see how others will experience the subscription process.

Submit a request via email to servicedesk@northwestern.edu asking that the list be deleted/retired. Please be aware that deleting a listserv will delete its message archive, and message archives cannot be backed up or transferred between lists. Note that your request must come from one of the email addresses that owns the list. Please don't simply abandon the list when you no longer need it.

There is no way to rename a listserv. Instead, you will need to delete the incorrectly-named listserv and create a new listserv with the appropriate name. Please be aware that deleting a listserv will delete its message archive, and message archives cannot be backed up or transferred between listservs.

If you would like to delete your listserv and create a new one with an updated name, make sure you export the subscribers of the old listserv so you can import them into your new list once it is created. Once your subscribers are backed up, you can take the following steps:

1. Send an email to servicedesk@northwestern.edu to request the deletion of the old listserv. Make sure you include the exact name of the old listserv (the part that comes before @listserv.it.northwestern.edu) in your email.
2. Fill out a new Listserv Request Form to request your new, correctly-named listserv.