Microsoft Outlook

outlook icon

We are excited to announce that PSU employee email accounts will be migrated from Zimbra to Microsoft Outlook this summer. The Outlook experience will dovetail nicely with our increased use of Microsoft Office 365. 

Training Resources

Email

Calendar

Miscellaneous

  • Downloading Briefcases from Zimbra | Video | PDF | PDF without images
  • Exporting Zimbra calendars/importing to Outlook | Video | PDF | PDF without images
  • Moving your Zimbra events to Outlook on a Mac | Video | PDF | PDF without images
  • Importing Zimbra calendars to the Outlook Desktop Windows | Video | PDF | PDF without images
  • Split Face for Email Signatures | Video | PDF | PDF without images

Settings

Mobile Device Connection

  • Connecting Outlook to an Android Device | Video | PDF | PDF without images
  • Connecting Outlook to an iOS Device | Video | PDF | PDF without images

Access Outlook

Frequently Asked Questions

  • Why are we moving from Zimbra to MS Outlook?
  • What are the benefits of MS Outlook?
  • Why didn't we move to MS Outlook 6 years ago when we implemented Zimbra?
  • Will my Emails be moved from Zimbra to Outlook?
  • Will my Calendar Events be moved from Zimbra to Outlook?
  • So…how do I get calendar events into Outlook?
  • Will my Contacts be moved to Outlook?
  • Will my Folders be moved from Zimbra to Outlook?
  • Will there be Briefcases in Outlook?
  • Will Resources that were in Zimbra now be in Outlook?
  • What will happen to my shared folders and calendars?
  • How do I get my email on my phone/tablet?
  • Will there be training for Outlook?
  • Will there be online training materials available?
  • When did the migration begin and how does it work?
  • What versions of Outlook will be supported by ITS?
  • Do I have to use VPN to access Outlook while off campus?
  • Who can help me with Outlook if I need it?
There are many reasons that PSU is moving from Zimbra to MS Outlook.  In 2016 the Information Technology Council (ITC) recognized the role of Microsoft Office 365 in our daily lives and asked ITS to investigate and implement MS Outlook email for campus.  We learned in our investigation of the product that moving to Outlook would not only integrate power Microsoft Office 365 tools, it would save the University money that could be put toward other needed IT areas that had suffered budget cuts.
  • Outlook integrates flawlessly with Office 365 tools, giving users seamless interactions with powerful tools in one spot. 
  • In addition Outlook is included in our Office 365 contract at no additional charge.  Zimbra is open source software, but to make it work on client's mobile devices the University pays about $3,600 per year to a third party company.  In addition, Outlook email is stored in the Office 365 cloud, costing the University nothing.  With Zimbra, several terabytes of expensive enterprise-class storage are devoted to housing our e-mail... we've allocated about twice the space the e-mails actually consume since we use storage to house the originals and use more storage (in a different location/system) to back them up.  Once a migration is complete and the "archive availability" period for Zimbra is over (several months after the switchover), we'll be able to remove or re-purpose this storage to meet other pressing needs.
  • The current email account space allowed per client on campus is 7 gigabytes due to our limited and expensive storage, Outlook has a limit of 50 GB.
  • Outlook and Skype work in tandem in Office 365.  So much so that Skype instant messaging conversations can be logged in Outlook for future reference. 
When the Search Committee was reviewing email systems in 2013 Outlook was not a free offering in the Office 365 package like it is today.  The costs at the time was 6 figures, well over that of Zimbra and the 3rd party software for mobile devices.

ITS has worked with several migration tools as well as other institutions that have moved from Zimbra (or another email system) to Outlook.  Your Zimbra email and email folders will be waiting for you in Outlook. The vast majority of you will find that all of your email from Zimbra has been migrated. A few of you will see recent emails, but will find that your historical emails (year+ old) are still migrating over.  In addition, per our earlier Outlook messages if you deleted email before our last backup these were indeed backed up and will be in your Outlook account, where you will need to delete it again.  If we're unable to migrate everything automatically, we'll provide training on how individuals can migrate their own very old emails from Zimbra to Outlook.

Again, ITS has worked with several migration tools as well as other institutions that have moved from Zimbra (or another email system) to Outlook.  We have learned through testing and 'lessons learned' by others that there is no currently available migration tool that can successfully migrate calendar events and leave them intact for use from one email system to Outlook.  In fact, in working with other institutions that have attempted this, we've been told that if they had to do it over again that they would not have attempted to migrate calendars. In testing an array of migration tools that claim to migrate calendar appointments and leave them 'intact' we have learned that their claims are simply not true.  The tools themselves can migrate the events BUT the events are far from intact.  After they are migrated they don't retain the original "owner" information.  That means any changes by the original owner of the event won't be duplicated to any of the attendees' calendars.  Multi-attendee appointments turn into multiple individual appointments after migration.  If a meeting is canceled, for example, each attendee would have to find and cancel "their" copy of the original meeting in their calendar.  For this reason, ITS will not be moving calendar events over to Outlook.  However, Zimbra will be left up for several months in a read-only state so calendar events can manually be entered into Outlook. In addition, directions on how to migrate historical calendar events will be shared for those wishing to do so.

  • Historical Calendar Events (all events before June 24th) can be migrated from Zimbra by each user. Here are the directions: Link Coming Soon!
  • Future Calendar Events will need to be entered into Outlook by hand.
  • Recommendation: Print your calendar out from Zimbra this week as a reference tool to ensure that you have everything that you need when you enter future events.
Yes. Your address book(s) will be migrated.  A few of you have shared address books.  In this rare case, everyone on the share list will get a copy of the shared address book but they'll no longer be linked (i.e. changes by one person won't show up on other people's copy of the address book).

Yes.  Every folder containing emails that have migrated has been moved to your account.  Again, if you are one of the very few who still has historical emails migrating over, the folder will be arriving soon.   

Outlook doesn't offer an analog to the Zimbra Briefcase.  However, you have access to Microsoft OneDrive.  This tool allows you to share files and folders with others and should be the tool of choice for the few of you who are using Zimbra Briefcases now.  Link to directions coming soon!

Yes, all Resources (rooms, laptop carts) that you could reserve in Zimbra are now in Outlook.

You will need to re-share any folders and calendars in Outlook that you were sharing with others in Zimbra.

Outlook is configurable for the following phone/tablet operating systems: iOS (Apple), Microsoft, and Android.  

At this time we are recommending and supporting the Outlook app. Simply go to the app store and download the Microsoft Outlook app (it’s free and it's logo will match the logo at the top of this web page).  After the app is downloaded use your PSU ID and Password to login.

In the coming weeks we will work with clients that prefer to use their mobile mail clients.  Be watching your inbox for information and directions on this. 

Yes! There will be face-to-face training sessions available as well as online training materials to reference.  Enroll in face-to-face training sessions!  More training sessions will be added as needed.

Yes! Please find regularly updated Outlook training materials (PDF step-by-step guides and videos) at the top of this web page under Training Resources.
The migration began during the spring semester.  However, clients did not need to take any action during that time.  ITS began making copies of old emails - in the background - and placing them into Outlook.  This "first pass" allowed us to gauge future actions and timing for the following passes from Zimbra to Outlook.  This all happened transparently in the background while clients continued to use Zimbra.  
Beginning this process during the spring semester was critical for us to be ready to go for a Summer adoption.
Microsoft upgrades "maintenance release" patches and enhancements to major versions of Office 365 at their discretion.  We will support the currently released version since that's what users will be using to access e-mail.  For web client access, these updates are behind the scenes and are available immediately whenever Microsoft applies the update to their servers.  For the Outlook desktop client, updates will be delivered in much the same way as Windows Updates and Office Updates are currently.  At the time of switchover, we'll be using and supporting the then-most-current version of Outlook (web and desktop) that Microsoft provides to all Office 365 customers.
No :-)

Call, email or stop by the Gorilla Geeks for assistance anytime:

Location: 109 Whitesitt Hall

Phone Number: 235.4600

Email: geeks@pittstate.edu