Email FAQ


This article gives answers to some common questions relating to your University email.  

Calendars and contacts

Can I check on someone's availability for a meeting?

Yes you can.

To view the availability schedule a meeting, invite the user into the meeting and then click on Scheduling Assistant.

Can I hide my free / busy time in my Office 365 calendar?

You can control who has access to your calendar and who can see your free/busy time. Find out more about Using your calendar in Outlook Web App.

How do I access my Office 365 calendar?

Login to https://office365.leeds.ac.uk using your University of Leeds username (username@leeds.ac.uk) and your University password.  

Once you've logged in to the Office 365 service, click Calendar.

How do I look up the email address of someone from the University of Leeds?

When writing an email, you can type in the name of the person you wish to contact in the "To" box and then press Ctrl+K.  This will search for the email address and insert it into the To field. If it finds more than one result it will give you the choice of which one to use.

How do I use my Office 365 calendar?

Find out how to use your calendar online.  

How to I share my Office 365 calendar?

This depends on how you are accessing Office 365 .  

My name is incorrect or misspelt

You might be able to change this yourself.

Why do I keep missing calendar reminders?

If you did not set your time zone when you first logged in to Office 365 this will be set incorrectly to (UTC) Monrovia, Reykjavik.  This will cause your reminders to appear at the wrong time. 

You need to set the correct value on the Regional tab.

Email quarantine

Messages deemed by Office365 to be spam, bulk mail, phishing mail or mail that contains malware are quarantined. If mail has been incorrectly quarantined and you believe is valid, you can access these emails and release them yourself by visiting https://security.microsoft.com/quarantine and logging in with your normal Office365 credentials.
Quarantined emails are retained for 14 days before being deleted.

Organising, managing and sharing your mail

Can I delegate my mail and organise my calendar while I’m away?

Yes, you can allow someone else to manage your email and/or calendar and book meetings on your behalf.  Find out how to allow someone else to manage your mail and calendar.

Can I set a rule to automatically forward emails?

We do not recommend that you auto-forward your University Office 365 email to externally managed email accounts, such as Microsoft Outlook (formerly Hotmail) or Gmail (formerly Google Mail) as we have no control over the delivery of email to external accounts and no means through which to manage such accounts should things go wrong.   

The University will use Office 365 email accounts to correspond with students throughout their time at the University.  It's each students’ personal responsibility to check their University account regularly and frequently to ensure that important messages are not missed. The University can accept no responsibility should a student decide to auto-forward their Office 365 email to an external email account and as a result important messages are missed.

If you like seeing your email all in one place, you can add connected accounts to your Office 365 email:

How can I set up automatic replies?

To turn on or modify automatic replies, go to the gear icon  then Options > Organize email > Automatic Replies.

Find out more information about setting up automatic replies.  

How do I access my shared mailboxes?

Find out how to access your shared mailboxes.  

How do I setup filters or rules on my mailbox?

Mail rules are sometimes known as mail filters. They automatically check each message that you send or receive and run a pre-set rule that you can create. An example would be to file each message from a specific user to a subfolder.  These rules run on the server and not on your mail client, so continue to work no matter which email client you are using.  They can help you to avoid a cluttered inbox when you are on leave or at other times.

Find out how to set up rules and filters link.  

Sending and receiving email

How can I change the email format for all messages to be HTML?

How can I display a new window every time I want to create a new message?

How do I turn conversations off in the reading pane?

You can choose to turn on or turn off the reading pane, view of emails by conversation and several other display features. Find out how to Change display settings in Outlook web app link.

Is it possible to get the 100 Gb quota increased?

This is a limit set by the vendor Microsoft and mailbox storage cannot be increased past this size. If you have reached (or think you will reach) your 100 GB limit you should consider deleting some of the emails you no longer require. 

What size of attachments can I send?

The total size limit for any message is 25 MB. A message contains text and any attachments, which means the effective limit for any single attachment would also be 25 MB. If multiple attachments are included in a message in total they must be no larger than 25MB.  

Will I have to set up a signature on different devices?

Can I use mass mailing?

You will be limited to sending no more than 10,000 email recipients in a day and no more than 500 individually specified recipients per message wen using Office 365. For mass mailing needs requiring more than this you can;