There are two email/calendaring systems at Northwestern. Faculty and staff use Exchange (@northwestern.edu), and students use Google/Gmail (@u.northwestern.edu). These instructions guide you through configuring your Exchange account in Outlook.
In 2019 Northwestern is migrating all Exchange accounts from servers on campus to cloud-based Exchange. If you know that your department's accounts have been migrated, follow the instructions below to reconfigure your Outlook 2016 for macOS.
Note for members of the Feinberg School of Medicine: The F5 Big-IP Edge client must be installed on your computer and connected to the server before configuring your Northwestern email. See these Knowledge Base articles for instructions.
If you are having trouble getting past step 2, make sure you aren't connected to the Northwestern VPN.
If your account has not yet been migrated to cloud-based Exchange
- If you are opening Outlook for the first time, click Add Account, then select Exchange. If you already have an account configured in Outlook, from the top menu bar go to Outlook > Preferences > Accounts, then click the + symbol in the bottom-left corner and select Exchange...
- Complete the following:
- As the E-mail address, enter your @northwestern.edu email address
- From the Method dropdown menu select User Name and Password
- As the User name, enter adsyour NetID
- As the Password, enter your NetID password
- Check the Configure automatically checkbox
- Click Add Account, then:
- Enter an Account description: Northwestern (or whatever you'd like to call this account)
- Enter your Full Name: The name you would like to appear attached to your email in the From field on messages you send.
- Verify that the information in the other fields is correct, then click the red close button in the upper left.
Reconfiguring Outlook after your account has been migrated to cloud-based Exchange
- When you open Outlook, click Get Started. When a message indicating Outlook was redirected to the server autodiscover… appears, check the Always use my response for this server checkbox, then click Allow.
- If a message indicating Mail could not be received at this time… appears, click Yes to try again.
- When prompted, enter yournetid@ads.northwestern.edu as the User Name and your NetID password as the Password, then click OK.
- When prompted again, enter ADSyournetid in the NetID field, and your NetID password, then click Sign In.
- Outlook will begin syncing to the server, loading your mail and calendar data.