Setting Up and Enabling a Vacation Message

Important ! New students as of May 2009 will be using our latest email system, WhitMail, powered by Google. More information about WhitMail and how to use it can be found in our WhitMail FAQ. For information on setting up a vacation message in WhitMail please refer to Google's Vacation Response Guide.

Important ! Staff and faculty who have switched to Zimbra and are no longer on the Marcus network should follow Zimbra's Vacation Response Guide.  More information about Zimbra will be coming soon. More information about Zimbra and how to use it can be found in our Zimbra FAQ.

You can set your Whitman email account to automatically reply to all incoming email with a "vacation message".  Email will still reach your Whitman Inbox and will be there when you return, but anyone who emails will receive an automatically generated reply of your choice.   This reply could be anything from a notice that you won't be able to check your mail for awhile to a notice that you no longer at Whitman.

To setup the vacation message, you will need to use a Telnet program to connect to the faculty and staff mail server (marcus) or the student mail server (students).  There are many different Telnet clients that can be used to connect to these servers.  The simplest way to connect is to use a Web based Telnet program called MindTerm that is available to you via your respective web portals (listed as "SSH to Students" and "SSH to Marcus").

1. If you are a student, use MindTerm to Students. If you are a faculty or staff, use MindTerm to Marcus.
2. When either " SSH Server/Alias:students.whitman.edu" or " SSH Server/Alias:marcus.whitman.edu" is displayed, press ENTER.
3. Enter your E-mail User Name and press ENTER.
4. Enter your E-mail password and press ENTER.
5. Type vacation and press ENTER

• Answer the questions asked and follow given instructions

• If you choose to edit the message, use your keyboard's arrow keys to move the cursor, and delete text using the Backspace key. When you are finished, press CTRL-X to save your changes and close. 
• When you arrive at the following screen, hit ENTER to finish working on your message.  

• When activated, all the mail you recieve while you are away will be delivered to your inbox and the sender will receive an automatic vacation message reply. 

Disabling the Vacation Message

1. Follow steps 1 to 5 above.
2. You will be told that you currently have a vacation message installed, and asked if you would like to shut it off. Type Y and press enter. This will turn off the vacation message feature. In addition, you will be shown a list of the emails you received while you were gone.