How to forward your UMich email to another account using Pine

Yay! You’ve graduated from the University of Michigan, and you’re on to bigger and better things! While you’ve probably got bigger things on your mind for the moment, my experience working at the University’s computer lab help desks leads me to think that a lot of you are going to have a niggling question spring to the front of your minds sometime between May and July: what am I going to do with my umich.edu email account? Fortunately, moving your old messages to a new email account is pretty easy. For my method, all you’ll need is a UM account and access to a UM public computer (and if you’re off-campus, you don’t really even need that).

Note the first: These instructions are specific to the University of Michigan, but if you’re trying to do a bulk forward with Pine, you should be able to replace our specifics with your own. Also, thanks to Daniel Yoo for teaching me (and the rest of the consultant staff) this trick.

Alright, first step is to log into a public computer at a Campus Computing Site. You’ve graduated, so you ought to already know where they are, but in case you don’t, try here. Next, log in to the ITD server. On a PC, a shortcut lives in the start menu under Programs/Internet/UM Internet Resources/; on a Mac, it’s in the little Terminal icon in the dock just to the right of the vertical divider (both of these locations are likely to change as software is updated). Give the program the pops up your uniqname and password, and you’re in!

Note the second: if you’re using Gmail (and you should be!), see below for a special tip before you carry out these main instructions.

Now comes the part that makes you feel like an überhacker (at least, it always does for me):

1. Run ‘pine‘ after logging in
2. Press ‘L‘ to list all the folders you’ve created within your mail account
3. Select the folder you’d like to forward using the cursor keys and press enter to view the messages therein.
4. Once in the folder, press ‘;‘ then ‘A‘. (In the folder view, ‘;‘ gets you into the select menu, and ‘A‘ selects all the messages in that folder.) It will tell you "All x messages selected" and all the messages should have an X on its left most column.
5. Now, press ‘A‘ then ‘B‘.(In the folder view, ‘A‘ gets you into the Apply menu, which applies a certain command to the selected messages. ‘B‘ selects the bounce procedure to be applied to the selection.)
6. Type your new email address, e.g. user@gmail.com, and press return.
7. Press ‘y‘ when it asks you "Send x message to user@gmail.com?"

Pine will then bounce all the messages in that folder to the email address with the original headers (i.e. date sent, sender) intact! Repeat steps 3-7 for each folder you’d like to move.

I should note one caveat about this technique. Since Pine is just bouncing every message in your folder(s) of choice at your new email address, it can’t preserve the folders themselves. If you send three folders’ worth of emails to your new account, they’re all going to show up in your new inbox. Fortunately, there’s a workaround for those who use Gmail:

Special trick for Gmail users

This tip takes advantage of the fact that Gmail treats user@gmail.com and user+ArbitraryString@gmail.com as pointing to the same mailbox.To preserve your folders, follow these steps:

1. Before you begin bouncing your messages with Pine, log in to Gmail and hit the "Create new filter" link.
2. In the "To:" field, put User+FolderName@gmail.com, where "FolderName" is the name of the first folder you’ll be bouncing, and click "Next step."
3. On the next screen, check the box next to "Skip the inbox (archive it)" and "Apply the label…"
4. In the dropdown box next to this option, choose to create a new label and call it whatever the folder is named.
5. Now proceed to step 3 of the Pine instructions above, and bounce it to User+FolderName@gmail.com. Repeat the process for each folder.

Viola! When you’ve finished with the main instructions, you should have a clean inbox and a perfect copy of your folder organization with Gmail’s labels.

What if you’ve already left campus?

If you’re not in Ann Arbor anymore, you can’t very well stop by the Fishbowl to get this done. Fortunately, the Pine software lives on UM’s servers, so if you can log into those, you can still use it. This can be accomplished by using telnet, a generally outdated, insecure technology that I normally wouldn’t recommend for anything. But in this case, go for it! On a PC, open the command line shell (in XP, hit Windows+R, type "cmd," and hit enter. This probably works on Vista, too, but I don’t have Vista in front of me.). On a Mac, open the Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal). All set? Now regardless of operating system, type "telnet login.itd.umich.edu" and hit enter. You’ll be prompted for your username (uniqname) and password. A note on the password: like many *nix programs that require authentication, entering your password doesn’t produce any on-screen characters at all, even asterisks. It’s still working fine, regardless. Once you’ve logged in, return to the main instructions above.