FAQ - RWTH-E-Mail

In order to find out your mail address and username please log on to the Selfservice on https://rwth-aachen.de/selfservice/.

Next, select the option "Accounts and passwords" on the left and click on the service "RWTH-E-Mail". If you have more than one mail account at the RWTH, more than one service will be displayed with this name.

Here you will find the username in the form username@rwth-aachen.de (e.g. ab123456@maildomain.rwth-aachen.de). Aside from this username, you will need the password for your "RWTH E-Mail" account in order to log in successfully.

If you click on the pencil next to the service "RWTH-E-Mail" you will get an overview for this account. There you can find your e-mail address under "sending Address".

The error message "You don't have permission to send messages from this mailbox." says that you are trying to send via another e-mail address, i.e. assigned to your mailbox. This is not possible on the central mail system of RWTH Aachen University.

This typically happens at RWTH Aachen if you have entered your RWTH-E-Mail account user name (e.g.: ab123456@rwth-aachen.de) instead of your mail address (e.g.: max.mustermann@rwth-aachen.de) as the sender mail address in the SMTP (dispatching server) settings.

We only support the e-mail clients and apps listed on the following page.

Aside from e-mail functionalities, Exchange provides further groupware functionalities such as Calendar and Contacts. Additionally, mobile devices are supported as well.

The following e-mail clients support the additional Exchange functionalities:

a. Apple Mail

b. Outlook / Outlook für MAC

c. Outlook Web Application (OWA)

Manuals for restoring deleted e-mails for Outlook, Thunderbird and the webmail surface OWA can be found here.

When creating an account, Outlook displays the following popup report: 

This report must be confirmed so Outlook can download all required configuration settings to guarantee full functionality. Only then the free/busy times or out-of-office assistance will be displayed correctly.

If you have discovered that e-mails sent to you are undeliverable or if someone sending an e-mail to you receives the following error message:

• Report the fault to the IT Service Desk.
• Please provide the following information:
  • Sender and recipient address, date and time, screenshots of the error message and the email that could not be sent as requested attached. * Here you can find more answers to questions about e-mail.
• Here you can find more answers to questions about e-mail.

For incoming mail traffic the IT Center of the RWTH Aachen University uses the assessment system of the company Cisco Systems in order to reduce the amount of spam and virus-infected e-mails. With this process,each supplying e-mail system is assigned a so-called reputation score. This assessment is based on global analyses of the e-mail traffic of each dispatching system.

Three different gradations can be distinguished:

• Good
• Neutral
• Poor

If the reputation of an e-mail server is classified as "poor", the RWTH Aachen does not accept e-mails of this system and the sender receives an automatic message:
"554 Your access to this mail system has been rejected due to the sending MTA's poor reputation."

If you use your smartphone to add your own email address as a contact, and you assign a profile picture for the account, then this image will be displayed in the RWTH Mail App (OWA) in your settings under Options → General → My Account. It is not possible to modify the image in OWA.

If you want to change this picture, please change the profile picture that you have assigned to the contact on your smartphone. You can also delete the image to prevent a profile picture from being displayed.

• Students must first register the name change with the Registrar's Office
• Employees must first register the name change with the responsible Human Resources department

Regarding the export, the format is crucial so that you can import your own calendar in another "calendar" app.
We recommend to use Thunderbird for this purpose. By means of the integrated Lightning (calendar app) you also have access to your calendar and can perform the export.

(Background: On the server side, only an export in Outlook format (PST) is possible, this can only be used in Outlook).

You can sign your e-mails digitally, if you use the RWTH MailApp. To do so, you need to install the corresponding S/MIME Plugin.

In chromium-based browsers, you may first have to allow the installation and set up the corresponding certificate chain on the computer or in the browser so that the user certificate is recognized as trustworthy.

• You can use your e-mail client to define rules for archiving e-mails
• To do this, you must activate the archiving function in your e-mail client and create a local folder
• If you use an e-mail client such as Outlook or Thunderbird, you can follow these instructions.
• Unfortunately, the RWTH OWA does not support archive or export functions

• In the respective e-mail client, you can activate the settings to make extended logs visible to the user.

• Here you can find the official instructions from the manufacturers on how to enable extended logs for error diagnostics:

  Outlook: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/how-to-enable-global-and-advanced-logging-for-microsoft-outlook-15c74560-2aaa-befd-c256-7c8823b1aefa

  Thunderbird: https://www.thunderbird-mail.de/lexicon/entry/215-protokoll-log-datei-der-server-verbindung-mit-imap-pop-und-smtp-erstellen/