As of Friday, 18 August 2023, mail.dcu.ie DCU accounts for those who graduated prior to 2022 have been discontinued. All associated data - emails, contact details, information and photos stored on Google Drive, etc - not migrated or downloaded prior to the deadline can no longer be accessed. Alumni were given notice that this process was beginning in May 2023 and asked to download or migrate their data if they wished to keep it.

The University has provided all alumni with the opportunity to avail of a dcualumni.ie email address. It has very limited storage (1GB) but will support forwarding, so emails sent to this address will be forwarded on to a personal email address. Users can still use this alumni address to send emails. 

Access to Office365 for alumni was also retired, and access to Loop, Eduroam WiFi and the library is limited to current students only.

DCU has changed how it offers and manages alumni accounts for the following reasons:

1. A serious cyberattack has the potential to severely disrupt DCU’s operations. Moving alumni accounts to their own domain and allowing access to DCU’s core network only to current staff and students helps the university limit these threats.
2. Data protection and data governance are also a factor. Good data protection is both a moral and legal imperative for the University. The introduction of separate alumni accounts will also help us to improve cyber security for DCU’s current students and staff and will help to protect your data and privacy.
3. Google’s Educational licence storage policy has changed and it is no longer offering free unlimited storage. The financial impact of this change on the university is significant and it is no longer in a position to offer unlimited storage to alumni.

Current students are not affected by this change, it only affects alumni accounts.

If you are a current student, your mail.dcu.ie account remains active.

Not yet - but you will need to migrate your data after you finish your course. We will contact you directly about this prior to your graduation ceremony.

If you graduated in 2022 (February or October) or March 2023, you will continue to have access to your mail.dcu.ie account beyond the August 18 2023 deadline.

You will, however, need to migrate or download your data soon. We will be back in touch with more details in due course regarding your account.

In the meantime we recommend moving any other online services/utilities you use with this account to your personal account.

Also, adding and verifying a personal email to your Digitary account will make it easier to access your academic transcripts in the future.

If you did not update your Digitary account before the deadline, and cannot access your Digitary account, you will need to contact DCU Registry directly to obtain access.

You can contact DCU Registry by completing this form.

Emails sent to discontinued mail.dcu.ie addresses after 18 August 2023 will receive a bounce back message, informing them that the account no longer exists.

No. The email forwarding facility on your mail.dcu.ie account will no longer work as your mail.dcu.ie account has now closed.

Emails sent to discontinued mail.dcu.ie addresses after this date will receive a bounce back message, informing them that the account no longer exists.

If you missed the extended deadline of 18 August and did not apply to the post-deadline appeals process, your data will have been deleted and it cannot be retrieved

Sign-ups for the new dcualumni.ie account are currently paused with the passing of the 18 August 2023 deadline for Alumni Switch.

If you want to be notified when it’s possible to sign up for a dcualumni.ie account and other news from the alumni community, please update your details via the Keep in Touch page.

There is 1 gigabyte of storage in your new dcualumni.ie account.

Yes you can, and we recommend that all dcualumni.ie accounts should be set to forward to a personal email address and delete mails from your dcualumni.ie account. 

• Go to Settings
• Go Forwarding and POP/IMAP
• Click Add a forwarding address

Yes you can.

For convenience you can link your personal Gmail account with your dcualumni.ie account. This removes the need to log into your dcualumni.ie account if you wish to send an email using that identity. 

Once setup, you can choose to use either your personal Gmail address or your dcualumni.ie address when sending an email from within your personal Gmail account. 

Please see this Google help article for instructions.

The accounts of prospective Postgraduate taught and Postgraduate research applicants will not be affected by any activity under DCU Alumni Switch, provided you have applied through the DCU Student Application Portal. 

Please ignore any email alerts or correspondence in relation to the account closures; your application to DCU will override the closure process. If for any reason you experience any account issues, please email us at alumni.switch@dcu.ie 

However, if you do not register for the upcoming academic year, your account will close on 25 September 2023 after the new academic year commences.

We recommend setting up an ORCID ID - this is a free persistent digital identifier that you own and control, and that distinguishes you from every other researcher. This will also prove useful in the event that you change employers or institutions and as such receive a new institutional email address. 

More and more journals now require ORCID ID - you can find out more and set up your account here. If you have set up an ORCID ID, you can edit your own email address and choose to make it visible on your account. Once set up, add your publications to your ORCID account.

Finally, to help with the discoverability of any papers you published as a student in DCU, if you didn’t deposit them at the time in DORAS, you could contact the Library to see if they are eligible to be deposited in DORAS. 

This would be subject to publisher permissions. You can click here to find more information on DORAS.

No.

Your mail.dcu.ie address will never be issued to anyone else.

Dormant email addresses will be saved in the Student Information System and will only be reactivated and reissued to the original owner (i.e. the former student), should they return to DCU as a student.

For example, if you completed your undergraduate degree in DCU and return to do a Master’s, you will be reissued the same email address you had during your time as an undergrad. 

The data from previous use will have been deleted.