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We encourage members of the ARE Department to manage their e-mail accounts with the following utilities.

These e-mail utilities require your primal username and password to login and are available to anyone in the department with an e-mail account on primal. For most people, your primal username is the part of your e-mail address before the @ sign. For example, if your e-mail address is laurie@primal.ucdavis.edu, your primal username is laurie. Your primal password is the same password you enter when you first start Eudora or Outlook to read your mail.

If you are having problems logging into primal, contact ARE Computer Support and we'll be glad to help.

ARE WebMail

Ever been at a conference with an Internet cafe and wished you could check your ARE e-mail just like you can check your Gmail account? Access your e-mail from any browser, anywhere you have an Internet connection. You will be prompted for your username and password then click on the Login button.

Don't forget to log off and close your browser when you are finished!

If you are a Firefox user and receive an error message about an Invalid Certificate that contains the same Serial Number when trying to access ARE webmail, please follow the steps below to delete the old certificate information from your browser:

  • Run Firefox
  • Drag down from Tools to Options (or, on a Mac, from Firefox to Preferences)
  • Choose View Certificates
  • Click on the Web Sites Tab
  • Highlight the line "aremail.ucdavis.edu" and click on Delete
  • When prompted "are you sure?", Click on OK

You should be able to access your ARE e-mail now.

Start or Stop Forwarding Your ARE E-Mail

Want to have all your UC e-mail go to your home e-mail account too? Start or stop auto-forwarding your e-mail to any other e-mail account with this tool. You'll need to enter the address you are forwarding to, your primal logon and password, and then submit the form. Don't forget to close your web browser when you are finished!

Create or Remove a Vacation Auto-Reply Message

Create a custom e-mail message that will auto-reply to all your messages while you are on vacation or out of the office. Then, when you are back to work, return to this page and turn off your vacation message. We recommend that you include the date you will return to the office in your custom message. Don't forget to close your web browser when you are finished!

Sophos Puremessage E-Mail Protection

Primal, our departmental e-mail server, is running Sophos Puremessage software to protect against problem e-mail. This product provides virus, trojan, and malicious spyware protection at the server level for both incoming and outgoing e-mail. The best feature of the new software is how Puremessage identifies spam and protects users against e-mail scams and phishing attacks.

PureMessage quarantines viruses and messages with a Spam probability over 25%, and all messages with suspicious attachments. What this means is that such messages will be diverted to a "quarantine area". The messages remain in the quarantine area for 5 days, before they are purged.

There are two ways to review and retrieve messages from the quarantine:

  1. Each day, at 2pm, you will receive an e-mail digest that lists all spam and .zip files addressed to you that have been quarantined in the past 24 hours. Simply reply to the e-mail message to receive one or all of the quarantined messages. If they all appear to be spam, just delete the digest message; you don't need to do anything else.
  2. Messages in the quarantine can also be managed at any time of the day through the End User Web Interface (EUWI). To request your personal password for the EUWI, go to
    • http://primal.ucdavis.edu:28080
    • Click "here" if this is an initial password request
    • Enter your primal e-mail address
    • Click Send Authorization (the password will be mailed to you)

    Please note: if you send multiple authorization requests, only the latest request will grant you access to the EUWI.

    The EUWI Password will arrive as an e-mail message from the PureMessage Admin:

    1. Open the message
    2. Click the web link to log in
    3. Bookmark the page

    You will be logged in at the Blocked Messages page. Some of the options available are the ability to turn off/on spam filtering for your e-mail account, approve (whitelist) specific hosts or individuals so that their e-mail passes through the filter, and if you won't be checking e-mail for awhile, you can control the expiration date of your quarantined messages. You can also click on Help for the PureMessage End User Guide.

Please send e-mail to support@primal.ucdavis.edu if you have questions.