Forwarding e-mails to another address

Important

We strongly advise against setting up e-mail forwarding to an external email account.

The ITSC urges you to take note of the following guidelines to ensure that communication within THWS runs as smoothly as possible and, above all, in a timely manner.

Please note

Forwarding causes several problems and the delivery of e-mails cannot be guaranteed:

Storage capacity exhausted

If the destination mailbox (e.g. Web.de, GMX, Google, Yahoo, etc.) is no longer accessible due to storage capacity being reached, the forwarded e-mails will be rejected, meaning they will not be delivered, and you may miss important information from THWS. 

THWS on blocklists

Due to attacks on user accounts, spam e-mails were sent in the name of THWS accounts. This resulted in THWS being added to blocklists. Since then, communication with private hosting providers (e.g. Web.de, GMX, Google, Yahoo, etc.) has been disrupted or delayed. Consequently, if you have set up e-mail forwarding, you may not receive important e-mails, for example from the Department of Student Affairs (HSST) or the dean’s offices. Internal e-mails (THWS to THWS), however, are delivered without hindrance!

E-mail forwarding set up incorrectly

In practice, there have been several instances where e-mail forwarding was set up incorrectly, resulting in the THWS mailbox becoming inaccessible due to the storage limit being reached. Similarly, an error following a Microsoft upgrade may cause the forwarding to malfunction, meaning you may no longer receive e-mails. In both cases, this may not be noticed until it is too late and deadlines have passed.

Hosts on blocklists

If your hosting provider has ended up on a blocklist itself, you will be unable to reply to THWS e-mails and may therefore miss deadlines.

Therefore, please access your THWS mailbox directly!

Once your THWS Exchange mailbox has been set up on your devices (e.g. via Outlook or a mail client), you can be sure that you will receive all e-mails from THWS (dean’s office, students’ representation (STV), Department of Student Affairs (HSST), etc.) and be kept informed of events in a timely manner.

Alternatively, you can access it from any web browser via webmail.thws.de. Instructions can be found HERE.