How To Access Your Houston Community College Student WebMail On Your Android Device

[NOTE: (01/04/2016) The information below is no longer valid due to Houston Community College System changing their email service to Outlook365. I will post an updated instructional as soon as possible]

Are you looking for a way to retrieve your Houston Community College Student WebMail from your Android's email app? Or maybe you're looking for a way to get notified via your mobile phone when you receive emails in your student email? I know I was!

I am writing this blog post to share the information I discovered and learned regarding ways to retrieve, send, sync calendar events, and get push notifications when receiving emails in your Houston Community College Student E-mail using your Android's stock e-mail app. I haven't even started my first day as a college student yet, and I certainly don't want to miss any correspondence from my professors and classmates.

Before I start, I would like to mention that I wouldn't have been able to write this post if not for the following blog: Vango Versa: How to set up Houston Community College (HCC) Email on your iPhone Thank you! Unlike the blog post in the link above, in which she uses an iOS device, I happen to be using an Android device, the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 to be exact.

I hope this works on many Android devices, though I'm sure that if the right information is entered in an iOS device, this should work just fine. If you have an iOS device like an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, click the link above.

How To Setup Your Houston Community College Student WebMail On Your Android Device Using Microsoft Exchage ActiveSync:

You should have your Student ID (w#########) memorized, or at least ready.You're going to need that, and your password.

• Step 1: On your Android Device, go to Settings.
• Step 2: Select Accounts.
• Step 3: Select Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync.
• Step 4: Under the e-mail field, go ahead and enter your HCCS student email address. This should be in the firstname.lastname@student.hccs.edu format.
• Step 5: Then on the password field, enter your password.
• Step 6: Click [Next]
   
• Optional: Click Manual setup. Any information you may need will still be in the following steps. I haven't tried this yet, but I will update this post once I know more.
  

At this point, your phone will try to connect to the account, and you will get a warning that says "Unable to set up account: Unable to connect to server." This will happen because initially, your device will try to connect to student.hccs.edu, which is not the Exchange server that you want to use (see Step 6).

• Step 7: Under Domain/username: put "AD\w#########", the W######### being your student ID number. I'm not quite sure what the AD is, but I found that on the link above, and it worked for me. In case this doesn't work for you, I'll try to research more into it and find out the write letters for you. Also, pay attention to the slash [ \ ] , it's not a backslash [ / ].

• Step 8: Under Exchange Server: change it from student.hccs.edu to "webmail.hccs.edu". You're only changing the part that says student to webmail.

• Step 9: Keep the check mark on "Use secure connection (SSL)". Leave the "Use client certificate" unchecked.

• Step 10: Click "Next".

The next screens may take a minute or so to connect to the server. Just continue to click next and agree to whatever popup shows up on your phone.

Not only will this allow you to sync your Student WebMail's inbox, it will sync your created folders, drafts, sent items and deleted items as well. This will also sync your calendar events, contacts, and tasks by default. Keep an eye on those in your Calendar and Contacts apps. If you do not wish to sync your calendar and contacts, simply go to Settings - Accounts - Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync - your Student WebMail account - and uncheck "Sync Calendar" "Sync Task" and "Sync Contacts".

To make sure that your phone is synchronizing (or working properly) with your HCCS Student WebMail:

1. Log in to your HCCS Student Webmail at http://webmail.hccs.edu
2. On the top right corner, click Options, then click See All Options...
3. On the left of the screen, click on Phone. This will show you any of your devices that are synchronizing with your HCCS Student WebMail. It should look something like:

What about IMAP, POP and SMTP Access? I don't think HCCS provides any information on this at all on their WebMail. Yes, there is a link under Options about it, but the information regarding POP, IMAP, and SMTP says Not Available. As far as I know, there is no way to retrieve your email using POP or IMAP.

I hope this blog post helps! I'm also hoping that this helps me in my future adventures in college. If you have any questions, feel free to leave me a comment or send me an email.