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Understanding Emails at UT Austin

Published:
August 15, 2025

It can be challenging to keep track of all the various email concepts at the University. This article is a short overview of what you need to know. 

The UT Directory

Your email relationship with UT generally starts when you become a student, employee, or contractor.  When this occurs, you become eligible to be listed in the UT Directory. The email address listed in the directory is your official email address.

Where does my official email address come from?

Email addresses and other data in the UT Directory are sourced from a variety of systems, but in summary:

What is an IID?

The Institutional Identifier (IID) originated as a way to log into cloud-based services that required usernames to be in the format of [user@example.com], and is always yourEID@eid.utexas.edu. You may see your IID when using certain services like Microsoft 365, UT Box, and Canvas.

While this is a username, it looks like an email address and works like one under certain contexts. Any email sent to your IID will be forwarded to your official email address as listed in the UT Directory.

Your IID isn’t a separate email account – it’s best thought of as an extension of your EID.

What email addresses do I have?

Microsoft 365

Eligible students, faculty, and staff at UT Austin get a Microsoft 365 email account automatically. A Microsoft 365 account has a primary address, and optionally one or more secondary addresses, also known as aliases.

If you don’t know your Microsoft 365 email address(es), please visit Office 365 Management.

Google (UTmail)

Some students, faculty, and staff choose to create a Google Workspace account in addition to their Microsoft 365 account. To view or manage this account (or if you aren’t sure if you have one), please visit UT Mail.

Other

Some departments have elected to run their own email servers in addition to or in place of those offered by the University.  Common examples include the Department of Computer Science and Applied Research Laboratories.

For information on these accounts, please contact your department’s IT support.

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