NDSU students, employees, alumni and other individuals who have student email accounts in NDSU’s instance of Microsoft Live will upgrade to Office 365 email and calendaring during the weekend of June 28-30. Beginning at 5 p.m. on Friday, June 28, Microsoft will upgrade individual NDSU Live accounts to Office 365.
Persons who have an NDSU student email account may briefly lose access to that account while the upgrade is taking place. Any device set to synchronize with a Live account may receive authentication or connection errors during this time.
Employees and others who already have an Office 365 account for employee email or for another institution’s student email should note their NDSU student account will be in a separate instance of Office 365 and the other account will not be affected by this upgrade.
NDSU Live provides access to email, calendaring and SkyDrive for file storage and sharing. Because Microsoft’s Office 365 system does not include SkyDrive, an individual’s NDSU Live account will become two separate accounts after the upgrade – an Office 365 account used to access NDSU email and calendaring, and a personal Microsoft account that retains access to files stored in SkyDrive. The NDSU Information Technology Division anticipates that Microsoft will add a SkyDrive Pro service to all NDSU employee and student Office 365 accounts in the near future.
After the upgrade, NDSU student email and calendaring in Office 365 can be accessed on the Web at www.outlook.com/my.ndsu.edu. Users can log in with their same email address, typically firstname.lastname@my.ndsu.edu, and password they used to access their NDSU Live account. Office 365 can also be accessed via Microsoft Outlook software installed on a computer or through an Exchange account configured on a mobile device. Users may be prompted to re-enter their password in Outlook and on mobile devices when accessing their account for the first time after the upgrade.
Persons who use SkyDrive to store and share documents and other files will be able to retain access to those files by logging in to their new personal Microsoft account using their same email address and password at www.skydrive.com.
Users who have forgotten their NDSU email account password should call or visit the NDSU IT Help Desk. Staff can assist with resetting Office 365 passwords. Password resets for Skydrive only can be processed at https://account.live.com/ResetPassword.aspx.
Keep in mind, changing your Office 365 password will not change your SkyDrive password, or vice versa. Password changes and resets must be done separately for each account.
Email will continue to serve as an official communication channel through which NDSU administration, faculty, staff and other representatives will communicate with students regarding university business.
The student email upgrade to Office 365 is a first step toward bringing students, faculty and staff into one email and calendaring system. After the upgrade, NDSU student email accounts will remain in a separate instance of Office 365. The North Dakota University System anticipates merging those into the faculty and staff instance of Office 365 during the upcoming academic year.
For more information, contact the NDSU IT Help Desk at 231-8685 or ndsu.helpdesk@ndsu.edu.
NDSU is recognized as one of the nation's top 108 public and private universities by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education.