How to Get Your UIC Netid, Common Password, and Set Up Your UIC Email Address

• Why You Need These UIC Identifiers
• Step 0: Netids
• -- Faculty and Staff Only: Select Your Netid
• -- Student Netids
• Steps 1 and 2: Identify Yourself and Accept the ACCC Terms of Service
• Step 3: Set Up Password Recovery Options
• Step 4: Set Up Email Account (if necessary) and Routing for Your netid@uic.edu Email Address
• Step 4+: If You Open a Google Apps Account
• Step 5: Select Your Common Password
• Steps 6 and 7: Some Additional Options
• Related links

NetID:

The UIC network ID, or netid, is a public identifier used to identify yourself for your ACCC accounts and services. You will also use your netid to access UIC and University of Illinois online and Web services, including UIC Human Resources online systems, students' my.UIC.edu portal accounts, and to establish an Enterprise ID for accessing UI Enterprise Applications.

Your UIC netid is part of your UIC email address (netid@uic.edu) and is used to login to my.UIC.edu, UIC-Wireless, ACCC email accounts, and the ACCC Unix servers, among other things.

Email Address:

You need to set up your UIC email address (netid@uic.edu) because important campus, department, and class information will be sent to it. You can, but do not have to, use an ACCC email account to manage your netid@uic.edu email.

Password:

Your netid is not a password. It is the public part of the identity pair that you will use to identify yourself on campus. To use your UIC netid, you will also need an ACCC Common password, which is the private part that is known only to you.

This page is a run-through of the ACCC Web pages that you'll use

• To get your UIC netid,
• To set up forwarding for your UIC email address, your netid@uic.edu,
  (You can either open an ACCC email account for this or use an email account that you already use. We usually use netid@uic.edu when we refer to this; please keep in mind we're referring to your netid, not the word "netid".)
• To set an ACCC password to go with your UIC netid.
  (Note that you will need an ACCC password -- to use many campus services -- even if you choose not to open an ACCC account at this time.)

Note: all UIC netids are all lower case. You can type them in mixed case in your email address if you want, but not when you're using them to login.

ACCC, by the way, stands for Academic Computing and Communications Center. We provide general email, computing, and other computer-related services to the UIC campus, as well as network -- Internet -- and phone service.

Faculty and staff can pick a netid through their departmental Phonebook Contact Person, who can register the netid in the Online Phonebook.

Use the following form to find the Phonebook Contacts for your department (or just leave the Department field blank if you want the full, rather long, list of Phonebook Contacts).

Almost any unique netid is acceptable; first come, first served. The netid must have a minimum of three characters and a maximum of eight characters. Letters and numbers are permitted, but other characters are not. For example, Ada Byron Lovelace might choose adabyron as her netid. (In fact, she did.)

Once chosen, a netid cannot be easily changed, so please choose it carefully. Remember that the netid is a public identifier, and will probably be put on your business card.

Netids are registered immediately, so you can go on to select a password and open your account(s) after your netid is registered.

Note: Students do not need to do this because they are automatically assigned netids when they are admitted. By convention, UIC student netids are of the form flllll##, where f is the first letter of the student's first name, lllll are the first five letters of the student's last name, and ## is a number, from 1 and up, to ensure the netid is unique. For example, if Ada Byron were a student, her netid might be abyron12.

There are occasional exceptions to the conventions used for student netids, mostly in cases where a new student already has an Enterprise ID or a netid from another UI campus at the time they are admitted to UIC. Not all UI campuses employ the same conventions for establishing netids. A netid, once created at any UI campus, will usually (but not always) be propagated through the Enterprise system to all UI campuses that the person becomes affiliated with.

• Activating Your Netid and Getting Accounts for email or other purposes. (Activating your netid means getting an ACCC common password to go with your netid. After you get an ACCC common password, you can open an ACCC email or Unix account if you wish.)
• Using Electronic Mail
• Quick Facts for Email and Email Addresses
• Need help? Contact the CSO