Can I change my Duck ID and email address?

Question

Can I change my Duck ID and email address?

Answer

After your account has been claimed, it can't be changed for reasons of preference.

Individuals in the following situations are eligible to change their Duck ID:

• You have had a legal name change and your Duck ID no longer reflects your legal name
  • Prerequisite: Your new name must already be on file with the university 
  • Employees submit name changes to the Payroll Office; Students submit name changes to the Registrar's Office
• Your current Duck ID does not reflect your gender and preferred name
  • Information about Name, Gender Marker, and Document Changes at UO
  • Prerequisite: Update your preferred name via DuckWeb
• You are being stalked or harassed and have reported it to UOPD and/or your local police department 
• Your Duck ID spells something offensive in your native language

If one of these criteria describes you, please continue reading for more information.

Changing your Duck ID will result in loss of access to technology services for an extended period.

If a technical failure occurs:

• You may be unable to access any Duck ID related services (including receiving email) for multiple business days while support staff from multiple teams are engaged
• Repairing Duck ID change failures may require you to interact with support staff multiple times during the repair process to confirm things are repaired
• The below disruptions still apply after your Duck ID has successfully been changed

In the best-case scenario, where no technical failure occurs:

• You will experience some disruption in your technology access for lengths of time that vary by service
• You may be required to engage multiple IT teams to restore your access to services
• Due to the distributed landscape of technology at UO, it is difficult to maintain a comprehensive list of impacts you may experience after changing your Duck ID; the list on this page is the best effort. 
• Known disruptions include:
  • UOmail Service
  • Centrally managed employee and student services
  • Distributed employee and student services
  • Devices using your UO account
  • Personal activities tied to your UO account

Technology Disruptions and Delays

Disruption to UOmail Service 

Changing your Duck ID also changes your email address.

This means that:

• You will be unable to receive any email for a period of time
• You are responsible for notifying your contacts about your new address
• Other UOmail users who have emailed you from Microsoft Outlook may be unable to email you again until they update your entry in their nickname cache (see Information about the Outlook AutoComplete list (by Microsoft) under How to remove AutoComplete list entries one at a time)
• Delegated access to other accounts may have to be reconfigured (such as delegated access to calendars, inboxes, or Send As permissions)
• Subscriptions to manually maintained mailing lists (such as class lists, departmental lists, position-related lists, etc) will have to be updated by yourself or the person who administers those list(s)

Email forwarding option:

• Email forwarding from your old address to your new one is available for up to 90 days, but your old address will be unavailable after that window ends
• Email forwarding can result in receiving duplicate messages from automatically generated mailing lists (such as Around the O) for the window that it is active

Disruption to Other Centrally Managed Employee and Student Services 

The following services will be impacted and some require action from you to restore functionality.

Please note that times are estimated and represent a best-case scenario where no technical failure occurs.

Disruption to Distributed Employee and Student Services 

Any of the upwards of 500 campus technology services that are not centrally managed could stop working.

Examples include programs used to conduct business, research, or learning in your department or classes, departmental websites with manually controlled permissions, etc.

In the event of issues:

• You will be responsible for requesting help from the IT groups who support these services
• You may not have access to these services for an indeterminate amount of time 
• In some services, transaction histories or content logged under or attached to your old Duck ID may not transfer to your new Duck ID

Disruption to Your Devices 

All devices that connect to your Duck ID account will have to be updated with your new username.

Employees are highly likely to need assistance from their departmental/local IT group:

• UO-provided laptops and PCs may need to be plugged into the UO network via Ethernet cable to update correctly
• If you use Microsoft Outlook to check your email, you may need to create a new Outlook profile
• Local resources such as printers, shared drives, department home drives, and more could be impacted

Disruption to Personal Activities 

• If you log in to the GoDucks ticket office website with your UO email address, you may have to contact them to have your account updated
• Subscriptions to non-UO mailing lists will have to be updated either by yourself or the party who administers those list(s)
• Websites or services that use your UO email address for login and/or password recovery will need to be updated
  • Examples include Facebook, Dropbox, bank accounts, Apple IDs, software and forum registrations, club membership accounts, merchant websites like Amazon, etc
  • Failure to update while email forwarding from your old address is active can result in permanent loss of that account if the service provider does not offer advanced account recovery

I accept the risks. How do I change my Duck ID?

Submit a ticket through the UO Service Portal. You will be contacted via email after you submit your ticket.

The following are recommended to improve your experience:

• Schedule your visit at a time when technology disruption will have the least impact on you
• Come prepared with several Duck ID choices in mind in case your preferred choice is not available
  • Duck IDs are created by choosing three to eight letters that represent your name
  • Numbers may also be included if desired or necessary in order to create a unique Duck ID
  • For example, if your name is Jane Emma Smith, acceptable options would include things like jsmith2, jesmith, jes, janes5

Best practices for employees

• If you log in to UO computer(s), you should log out of them while the Duck ID change is happening
• If you use Adobe Creative Cloud, don't forget to back up any files from your Cloud storage into local file storage before you visit
• Notify your departmental/local IT group you are planning to change your Duck ID. If they need to schedule a time to meet with you, it gives them the opportunity to do so.