Email Policy FAQ

In accordance with University of Florida electronic mail policy, only to the following approved UF-affiliated domains and specific cloud-hosted service providers utilized by University of Florida business:

• *.ufl.edu (i.e., @shands.ufl.edu, @jax.ufl.edu, etc.) 
• flvc.org 
• ba.shands.org 
• orlandohealth.com 
• floridaproton.org 
• Centflhealth.org 

For more information, visit Electronic Email Forwarding.

Email addresses that end in ufl.edu are provided by the University of Florida, and are approved for use. This includes UF Exchange and GatorCloud email. Email services such as Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail are not provided or approved by the university, and not allowed to be used to conduct university business.  

Employees shall promptly forward those emails to their ufl.edu email address to come into compliance with this policy. 

For all users of UF Exchange, this is system setting and requires no action by individual users. Users of other email systems need to check with their IT support staff. The UF Exchange system is configured to:

• Automatically delete messages in the Inbox and Sent Items folders after 1095 days
• Permanently delete messages in the Deleted Items folder after 30 days
• Automatically delete messages in the Junk E-Mail folder after 14 days

To prevent automatic deletion of messages from the Inbox or Sent Items folder, simply move them to a folder outside of the Inbox. For more information, please see Managing Mail.

Faculty and staff should contact their college or departmental IT support. Students can contact the UF Computing Helpdesk.

The University of Florida Electronic Mail Policy applies to all components and Direct Support Organizations (DSOs) of the University of Florida. If circumstances arise where a non ufl.edu email address is used in connection with university business (either inadvertently or out of technical necessity), employees shall promptly forward those emails to their ufl.edu email address to come into compliance with this policy.

The email policy and the document retention policy are related to each other but each addresses a different issue. The retention period in the Electronic Mail Policy refers to how long email stored in the Inbox, Sent Items and Deleted Items folders will remain in those folders. The document retention policy establishes how long official business documents must be kept in order to satisfy legal requirements. You can find details on retention times for different types of documents at the UF Document Retention Schedule web page. Email will not be erased when saved in folders other than the Inbox, Sent Items and Deleted Items folders.  Creating folders is a good way to organize email. You can create any number of folders you may need.  To create a new folder please see Managing Mail for detailed instructions.

The retention time for official records depends on the type of information included in the email communication. Some information and email can be deleted immediately, while other information may require to be kept in perpetuity. Three years was chosen to comply with the retention requirements for the Correspondence and Memoranda: Administrative record type. It is important to note that if an email contains information that requires a longer retention period, the email must be moved by the owner of the account, to an email folder other than Inbox, Sent Items or Deleted Items folders. To create a new folder for this purpose please see Managing Mail for detailed instructions.

Email stored in folders you create is not automatically deleted. To create a new folder for this purpose please see Managing Mail for detailed instructions.