OSU Internet Username

Ohio State University assigns a unique identifier for every faculty member, staff member and student. The format is name.number@osu.edu. Email sent to this address is usually forwarded to a local mail account, administered by the user’s department or college, whereby the user can send and download email.
New users may not have a name.number assigned. This may take the university system 2-6 weeks to assign. Once assigned, a name.number users can activate the account, create a password and set/change the forward. This can be done online at the OSU Account Management page https://acctmgt.service.ohio-state.edu/ . Veteran employees who weren’t assigned a password or who have forgotten their password can get assistance though OIT’s help line (614) 688-HELP (4357).
The easiest way for Extension users to check what forward is currently set is to visit
http://www.ag.ohio-state.edu/~directory/SearchPers.php and searching by your last name or office. Look at the “Email forwarded to:” entry.

Local accounts

Email accounts are usually setup at the college or department level. College of Food, Agriculture and Environmental Sciences (CFAES) email accounts have changed several times over the last several the years. Usernames (the portion of the email address to the left of the “@”) have taken the form of:

• First_inital_last_name
• Namenumber (same as OSU name.number without the dot)
• Other shortened name (ie, Bonnie, TAB, slink)

Past CFAES email domains (the portion of the email address to the right of the “@”) may have included:

• ag.osu.edu
• postoffice.ag.ohio-state.edu
• agvax2.ag.ohio-state.edu

Most of these older email address have continued to work being “grandfathered in” to allow users the option to change or remain the same. Users in effect could have many different functioning email addresses including the OSU name.number@osu.edu .

The College of Food, Agriculture and Environmental Sciences (CFAES) is about to undertake a standardization of email usernames and domains. All email addresses will take the format name.number@cfaes.osu.edu . All users will soon have just two valid email addresses

• name.number@osu.edu
• name.number@cfaes.osu.edu

If you have any questions, contact your tech person.

I found a good tech tip while reading the latest post from our Texas friends on the EIT Tech Ops Blog. Often, we ignore subtle hints and reminders from our computer. One of the reminders we shouldn’t ignore in Windows XP is the Windows update notification icon . This little yellow shield with the exclamation point shows up in the notification area next to the date and time on the bottom right of your computer screen. If you hover the mouse pointer over the shield, the message “Updates are ready for your computer. Click here to install these updates.” becomes visible. Even if you have Windows set to update automatically, the shield will still appear asking for human intervention, go figure.

On May 22 of this year Microsoft updated its article on the “End of Support for 98 and ME”

July 11th, in just a few days, say good bye to support from Microsoft for and flavor of Windows 98 and ME. Microsoft will retire any tech support documents and updates for these products.

So with this in mind, people may want to start updated or purchasing some new machines.