E-Mail Alias

An e-mail alias is a synonym in the first part of an e-mail address in order to identify the user (to the left of the "@" sign). For example, the user Peter Müller might want to have a “prettier“ (easier to remember) e-mail address than the one derived from his actual account name (for instance, abc00@uni-koeln.de) and use the alias peter.mueller@uni-koeln.de or mueller.p@uni-koeln.de instead. Umlauts are not possible for e-mail addresses.

Note: One user can only register one alias. If you wish to register a new alias, the old one has to be deleted. The e-mail address which contains the user identification, like abc00@uni-koeln.de, cannot be changed or deleted.
As an exception to the aforementioned rule, a second e-mail alias can be set up for you in case your name changed (e. g. when you get married) and had an alias with your old name set up previously. In this case, please contact the help desk and state the exact alias that you would like to register.

Setting up an e-mail alias

Use the functions in uniKIM to set up an e-mail alias.

Please note that it may take 2 to 3 hours for your new alias address to become valid. While e-mail messages sent to your new address will be delivered to your Inbox automatically, you need to manually change the sender’s address of outgoing e-mails to have the new address displayed to recipients of e-mail messages that you send. To do so, follow the instructions given in the tutorial for managing “Identities” in the webmail service, or, if you use another e-mail client, in the respective tutorials.

Conventions for the E-Mail Alias

For administrative reasons, we can only accept aliases that are of the following type:

Firstname.Lastname
First-Letter-of-Firstname.Lastname
Lastname.Firstname
Lastname.First-Letter-of-Firstname

Other versions (like Prof.Mustermann@) are not possible due to the higher administrative work. Regardless of that, you can adjust the name to be displayed in e-mails you sent to your likes using the “name” field of your e-mail address. You can change these settings in your e-mail program (client). For instance, you may include your title like this:

"Prof. Dr. H. Mustermann" <h.mustermann@uni-koeln.de>

When using the webmail service, the name field can be set by adjusting your “Identities”. See our tutorial for setting up identities in the webmail service for more information.

Special circumstances of names

In very rare cases, all of the e-mail aliases suggested by the uniKIM system may be unsuitable for you. For instance, this might be the case if

• Your name, as registered in the uniKIM system, contains several components, but only some of them should be part of the alias address.
• Your name, as registered in the uniKIM system, contains several components, and they should be displayed in a different order in the alias address.
• Your name originates from a different naming scheme and needs to be written in a special way in order to be both unambiguous and easy to understand for everyone.

If your name falls into one of these categories, please contact the Help Desk and state the exact alias address that you would like to have for your account. Note that the desired alias still needs to be along the lines of the aforementioned rules (part of first name and last name, separated by dots), in essence.

Limits of alias addresses

Please note that e-mail aliases are addresses referring to one person only. As such, we cannot provide aliases for institutions such as institution@uni-koeln.de (for example fs-medien@uni-koeln.de or media-workshop@uni-koeln.de) Please apply for a mailing list if you would like to use an e-mail address that is not tied to one single person.