Wharton Computing Student Support

Email Options

As a Wharton student you have several options for email. Each student receives a Wharton address, and is entitled to an email account with 500 MB of space. Students have differing needs for email usage; some feel it's important to have the calendaring and contacts that come with a Wharton email account; others prefer to have the greater size and flexibility offered by some of the larger email providers such as Yahoo or Gmail.

Using Your Wharton Email Account As Your Primary Email Source

Wharton Computing provides students with an email account on one of their Microsoft Exchange servers. The servers allow students to manage their email, contacts and online calendar. Students have the option to use a spam filter on the server which helps filter out bulk mail that is sent to their account. There are several security measures in place on the servers including anti-virus protection which help prevent known viruses from infecting email. For information on how to access your Wharton email account, please see the Using Your Wharton Account webpage.

Using Another Email Account As Your Primary Email Source

If you prefer to use an external account as your primary email source, you can opt to forward your Wharton email to it. If you choose the forwarding option, any email sent to your Wharton email account (your username@wharton.upenn.edu) or your Wharton lifelong email address will be forwarded to the address that you specify. To forward your Wharton email to another email account, simply click on the My Account tab in Spike and select the forward/unforward your email link.

If you decide to forward your email to another email account, please keep the following in mind:

1. Email forwarded to an outside program is not stored on the Wharton email servers. It bypasses Wharton email server security measures and is not scanned for viruses or processed through the spam filters. Keep in mind that if something happens to a forwarded email, it cannot be recovered.
2. Wharton Computing does not support external email programs. Problems encountered while using an email program should be addressed with the program's technical support team.
3. Some students have mentioned that they would like to use an external email account as their main email account, but would still like to send email addressed from their Wharton account. Although this is not possible in all email programs, some programs do provide the option to set the reply to address. Due to security measures in place on the Wharton email servers, in order to send email to Wharton addresses from an external program, you will need to specify the reply to address as your Wharton address.
4. There are several free email clients available which provide a variety of services. If you are trying to choose an email program to use, you may find our email options chart useful. The chart outlines several key features of Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, and Inbox.com.
   The email options chart is located on our website at: spike.wharton.upenn.edu/consult/email/email-options-chart.cfm