Starting your studies Starting your studies

Necessary first steps

When you start your studies at HAW Hamburg, you will receive your own HAW e-mail address, which we will use to communicate with you throughout your studies, as well as access to numerous services and offers.

Below we explain the steps you need to take to use all of these services:

1. Activation of your HAW account / M365

This allows you to use not only your e-mail address, but also a comprehensive MS Office package. The M365 login procedure also gives you access to the Moodle learning platform and free access to Sophos antivirus software. We strongly recommend that you protect your computers with the antivirus software.

Before using your HAW account for the first time you will need to activate it by changing the preliminary password and setting up two-step verification. This is done at: www.office.com

Your preliminary password consists of the following:
From 16 October 2025: 
HAW, year of birth, month of birth, date of birth, first letter of place of birth
Example: 23 September 2003 in Cologne --> HAW20030923K

Important note: Currently, most users do not have a place of birth stored.  Therefore, please add an ‘H’ at the end of the password if the password with the first letter of your place of birth does not work.  The above example then leads to this initial password:  --> HAW20030923H

Until 15 October 2025: 
HAW + the third (lowercase) letter of your user ID + your year of birth (four digits) + the month of your birth (two digits) + the day of your birth (two digits)

Example:
You were born on March 07, 2001 and have the user name wxy007@haw-hamburg.de, then your temporary password is: HAWy20010307

Here you will find step-by-step instructions for activating your HAW account / M365 

Further information

2. Setting up an additional login procedure (SSO)

To be able to use other online services (myHAW, WLAN etc.), you must set up a second login procedure. The single sign-on service works with the same HAW ID and password as when logging in via M365. However, you will need an additional second factor. 

Further information

3. Set up your Eduroam WLAN via the Easyroam app

With the Eduroam WLAN, you can use WLAN free of charge at HAW Hamburg as well as at other universities. The setup works via the Easyroam app. The prerequisite for this is a login via the single sign-on service (SSO service).

Further information

You can find an overview of all online services here.