Writtle University College and ARU have merged. Writtle’s full range of college, degree, postgraduate and short courses will still be delivered on the Writtle campus. See our guide to finding Writtle information on this site.

IT advice

Having issues logging in?

Report your issue using our dedicated form. Submit form

For all non-urgent issues and requests

Log a ticket with the IT Self Service Portal. Review the ticket options listed in alphabetical order and select the most appropriate to your situation.

Go to Portal

Call IT Customer Services

If you have an issue that is preventing you from working, call us on (01245) 68 4357.

Unable to use any of the above communication channels?

Go to the Library Helpdesk for information and advice.

If you have forgotten your password but already registered your security information with us via Multi-Factor Authenticator App then you can reset your password online.

Forgotten your password? Re-set your password online

If you are a new student attempting to login to our systems using the initial complex password sent to you in the “Your ARU User Account” email – note that you must first change your initial password before logging in.

To change your initial password please follow the instructions in the MFA page.

Choosing a new password

Your password should be unique to your ARU Network account (i.e. not reused on other services), at least ten characters long and contain characters from three of the following categories:

  • Lowercase letters (a, b, c)
  • Uppercase letters (A, B, C)
  • Numerals (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
  • Special characters. Examples include ( ) ` ~ ! @ # $ % ^ & * - + = \ { } [ ] ; " ' < /> , . ? _
Read more about how to choose a password.

If you are setting up MFA for the first time, please follow the instructions on the MFA information page.

Watch our video on how to set up MFA.


Important: When setting up MFA you should register multiple methods of authentication, which are not dependant on you having the same device available to you. You will be using MFA throughout your time at ARU and having multiple methods of authentication setup will ensure that you do not get stuck if your mobile phone is forgotten/lost.


Read more about the use MFA at ARU.

Screenshot of sign in problems error screen

If you are seeing the above error message when attempting to access an ARU system it is because the web browser on the device you are using is already signed in with a non-ARU Microsoft account. This could be a personal Microsoft account or a work Microsoft account.

A quick workaround to this is to open a Guest browser window which will not be signed into any Microsoft account, then attempt to access the ARU system again by copying and pasting the required URL into the address bar of the new Guest browser window.

If you are going to be using the same device throughout your time at ARU you might want to consider setting up separate browser profiles as a more permanent solution.

To open a Guest browser window in Chrome click on the Profile icon in the top right and select Guest

Screenshot showing how to set up a browser guest account