Vance changing email address early next year

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Frank John Casciotta
  • 71st Flying Training Wing Public Affairs
VANCE AIR FORCE BASE, Okla. --  The email format for Vance Air Force Base, Okla., is slated to change Jan. 23, 2012.

The new format, called "Email for Career," will create an email account Air Force members can use throughout their career, instead of having to get a new account each time they move.

The emails will change from base specific emails -- first.last@vance.af.mil -- to first.last@us.af.mil.

"The biggest benefit of this new system is that once it's set in place people will be able to access their email from any computer on a base that is part of the Air Force network," said Jeffrey Simon, the chief of operations with the 71st Communications Squadron.

The mailbox sizes will increase to 100 MB. However, at the start of the conversion process the box sizes will be reduced to 50 MB while accounts are migrated to the Air Force Network.

The best way to make the transition as "painless" as possible is to ensure mailboxes have less than 50MB of information stored prior to the start date, said Simon. If mailboxes are over 50MB they cannot be moved to the new system. Users not abiding by this will have to wait longer, and will not be able to send or receive emails until their mailboxes are the proper size.

"The process is scheduled to take six weeks, but it will depend on how fast people reduce the size of their mailboxes," said Simon.

Once a user's account has been moved to the Air Force Network, they will have the full 100 MB of space available.

"People who share the first and last name -- like the John Smiths out there -- they will have a number at the end of their name now to distinguish them apart," said Simon.

Users should inform people on their email list about the change. If someone sends an email to a us.af.mil account now, it will be forwarded to the recipient's vance.af.mil box. It will work the same way in reverse. An email sent to a vance.af.mil will be forwarded to the new us.af.mil box.

However, six months after the migration emails sent to base specific email accounts will no longer be forwarded and senders will receive an error saying the account doesn't exist.

You can check to make sure you have a "@us.af.mil" address by going to the following link and clicking on "Find out your E4C address" -- https://e4l.afds.af.mil/default.aspx.

If you do not have an E4C address, go to the 71st Force Support Squadron's Military Personnel Flight -- Building 500 -- Customer Service desk, 213-7500, to get a new updated computer access card.

For more information on the new email format, contact 213-5722.