Update Student & Alumni Email Addresses

This article will clarify the steps to update an email address for students & alumni.

Students are not able to change their own email address in Handshake, and if they do reach out to our Support Team for assistance, they are redirected to partner with their Career Services team to complete this update. 

There are two ways for Career Services staff to process this change: manually in Handshake or via Importer. 

Update via student sync in Importer

You'll need to modify your existing student sync file. For more details on this process, including required fields, refer to Importing Student Data.

Note: If your school has an automated sync, ensure the email address is updated in that file!

Tips on updating the email_address field:

• You cannot update a student email to an address that is associated with another institution/.edu, as those institutions would create separate accounts for these users.
• You can change these email addresses to personal accounts, such as @gmail, etc.

Additional Resource

Importer: Updating Graduating Students to Alumni

Manual update in Handshake

The first thing you'll need to check for is if the student is included in your student sync file. You can either review your student sync file, or you can pull up the account in Handshake to quickly see. 

When viewing the profile, click on the Account tab, and observe the email address field. If it is grayed out, then that indicates the account is being synced via Importer:

If you'd like to exclude this user from future syncs, then you can scroll down on this page and put a check next to Exclude from Automatic Syncs. 

Click Update User in the lower right corner of the page to save your changes.

Navigate back to the Account tab, and now you will observe a Change Email button to the right of the email address. Click this button to proceed. 

You'll need to enter in the new preferred email address in the field that appears, then click Submit Request.

When the request processes, you'll see a confirmation appear on the profile: 

There are two emails sent to the student/alumni user:

• The existing email address on file to confirm the change
• The new email address with instructions to complete the change 
  • When the user clicks on Change Email, they will see the following fields to complete: 
    • Email Verification Code
    • Password/Confirm Password