The following is a list of questions and answers (FAQs) about the email transition to your new CUNY email account. Additional FAQs specific to the new student CUNY email accounts, and not the transition, are available in CUNY IT Help.
Students should do the following to prepare for the transition to the new CUNY email account:
- Confirm they can access their current, college-assigned email account to receive information about their upcoming email transition from their college.
- Check their student email account regularly for updated information regarding the student email transition.
- Set up Microsoft MFA for use with their new CUNY email account and associated Microsoft 365 applications before spring break instead of waiting until April 13. See the Setting Up Microsoft MFA page.
- Review the content of their current college-assigned email account to see whether there is any information they wish to remove, download, or move to their OneDrive folders.
- Identify instances where they may have used their college email address as a username for other applications and services and change it to a non-CUNY email address.
On Monday, April 13, students should begin checking their new CUNY email account as all official college and CUNY emails will be sent to it after that date.
If they have not set up Microsoft MFA beforehand, they will be prompted to do so upon first access to their new CUNY email account. See Setting Up Microsoft MFA page for information.
Microsoft multi-factor authentication (MFA) provides additional security and privacy when using CUNY Login credentials to access Microsoft 365 applications. Although similar to the CUNY Login MFA used when logging into other CUNY and college applications like CUNYfirst and Brightspace, Microsoft MFA is only used when accessing your new CUNY email account and Microsoft 365 applications after the email transition. Microsoft MFA is another layer of security that secures your CUNY email account and help prevent bad actors from accessing your information.
For information on setting up your Microsoft multi-factor authentication (MFA), see Setting Up Microsoft MFA page for information.
If CUNY copies the content from your old college-based email account to your new CUNY email account, the following information will be copied:
- Emails: All email content, including folder structure and attachments.
- Calendars: Events, attendees, and recurrence patterns.
- Contacts: User contact information.
- Email Rules: Mail redirects, blocking rules, and other mailbox rules.
- Auto-reply Settings: Out-of-office replies and other automatic response configurations.
- Time Zones: Preserves the correct time zone settings for the mailbox.
What is Not Copied (Limitations):
- Encrypted Emails: Cannot be detected and are migrated unreadable.
- Folder Permissions: Permissions for folders are not preserved during the migration.
- Reference Attachments: Links to documents on OneDrive (like OneDrive for Business) are not preserved.
- Scheduled Emails: Future-scheduled emails are copied as drafts, not with their scheduled send time.
See Copy Limitations – Mailboxes on the ShareGate website for the full list of mailbox copy limitations.
The contents of your old, college-based email account will be copied to your new CUNY email account sometime after you return from Spring Break 2026.
If you need specific content from your old, college-based email account in your new CUNY email account sooner, you can forward messages as required.
Email automatically forwarded from your old college account to your new CUNY email account will have “FWD” in the subject line and be addressed to your cunylogin@cuny.edu email address.
If you have multiple college affiliations, it may be helpful to set up a separate folder for each college email address and establish rules in your new CUNY email account to automatically move auto-forwarded messages into the corresponding college folder. See Managing Multiple Email Addresses on this SharePoint site and Set up rules in Outlook on the Microsoft website for more information.
- Legacy Alumni Email accounts will not be transitioning and will retain the @slu3.cuny.edu email address.
- Students who will become Alumni after April 13th, 2026 will automatically have their Student Email Account converted to Alumni Email Account with Email access only. Access to OneDrive will be removed and it is highly recommended that Students should begin saving any OneDrive files they wish to keep.
- CUNY requires users to change their CUNY Login passwords every 180 days. Users will receive a reminder email notifying when it is time to change their passwords.
- Alumni who wish to keep their Alumni Email Accounts must actively use their account. After 12 months of inactivity, Alumni Email Accounts will automatically be deleted by CUNY CIS.
Students will receive a new OneDrive account with their new Student Email Account. Students will need to copy over their OneDrive files from their legacy OneDrive Account to their new OneDrive account to retain access to their files.
CUNY prohibits automatically forwarding emails from a CUNY email account to a non-CUNY Email account. For more details on this Policy please see CUNY Email Autoforwarding Prohibition Standard.