Overview
The University's employee email policy can be found on the USC policy website:
This policy has a retention component and a forwarding component: in our guide below, we focus on the retention component and provide instructions for acting in advance to retain important emails and/or attachments beyond the 16-month retention period established by the policy.
As stated by the email policy's FAQs, this policy applies to individual staff, faculty, emeriti, and affiliate accounts, as well as to all shared organizational accounts.
Please keep in mind that you must carry out these instructions before the 16-month retention period expires. There is no way to recover deleted emails/attachments once the auto-delete date has been reached: according to the email policy's FAQs, "ITS is unable to recover emails deleted in the enforcement of the employee email policy."
Employee email policy
In practice, the email retention component of the employee email policy means that any emails/attachments that you—as a USC employee—send, receive, or draft are automatically deleted from your USC email account (both Outlook and Gmail) after 16 months, unless you take action in advance to retain them beyond their auto-deletion date.
As stated in the policy:
Email retention
- The university will retain email and attachments in default folders for 16 months after messages are received, sent, or created (in the case of the Drafts folder).
- All email and attachments remaining in the university’s email default folders longer than 16 months will be automatically and permanently deleted.
- Employees have the ability to save messages before the 16-month period expires by transferring them to a top-level personal folder.
- Authors and recipients of email are responsible for identifying and saving documents that must be retained to comply with federal, state, or local laws, university policies or directives, or any other reason, before the 16-month period expires.
—From https://policy.usc.edu/employee-email/
A note about the record retention policy
The email retention policy does not necessarily equate to the amount of time that you are required to save emails and attachments for legal or other compliance reasons—for example, in some cases you must keep records on file for a number of years. In those cases, you are responsible for acting in advance to ensure that you are retaining the records beyond the 16-month default retention period:
Records generated as electronic mail (as e-mail or attachments) should be retained as either paper copies or stored on electronic media with appropriate storage and back-up protocols.
—From https://policy.usc.edu/record-management/
Please refer to the following resources for more information:
Checking which emails are subject to auto-deletion
Emails are auto-deleted after a 16-month retention period if they reside in top-level system-created default folders, for instance:
- Inbox
- Drafts
- Sent Items
- Deleted Items
- Conversation History
- Junk Email
- Archive (or Online Archive)
- Any subfolders you created within one of the above folders
Viewing an email's auto-delete date
In general we would recommend using Outlook 365/OWA (online) rather than Outlook Client on your computer to double-check an email's auto-delete date. There are a few reasons for this:
- Macs: Outlook Client does not show the auto-delete date for emails
- PCs: Outlook Client shows the auto-delete date for emails in your own mailbox, but not necessarily for emails in shared org account mailboxes
View an email's auto-delete date in Outlook 365/OWA (online)
Log into https://usc.edu/office365 using your USC NetID, and navigate to any email. The email's auto-delete date is listed within its label in the header. If your Outlook view is in conversation view and the email is collapsed, you will need to click on the email to expand it and reveal the auto-delete date:
View an email's auto-delete date in Outlook Client for PC
To check the auto-delete date on emails in your own inbox, open Outlook Client and navigate to any email: the email's auto-delete date is listed within its "Retention Policy" label in the header.
If you added a shared org account mailbox, the auto-delete date may not display properly on emails in that mailbox. If this occurs, log into Outlook 365/OWA (online) using your USC NetID to view the email's auto-delete date.
Retaining an email indefinitely in Outlook
Emails in your default folders/subfolders are automatically deleted once they reach the end of their 16-month retention period. To retain an email indefinitely, you must:
- Create a top-level personal folder, which will not have the 16-month retention period rule applied
- Manually move any emails you wish to retain into a top-level personal folder
Retain emails in Outlook Client for PC
Quick guide
- Open Outlook Client.
- First, create a top-level personal folder:
- In the left-side navigation, right-click (control + click) on your account name. (Do not right-click on your Inbox or any of the other folders, as that will just create a subfolder.)
- In the dropdown menu, click New Folder…
- A new folder appears underneath your account name. Rename the folder as desired. Once created, the folder will jump toward the end of your left-side navigation.
- If you like, you can "favorite" your new folder so that it also shows up at the top of your navigation:
- Right-click on the folder and click Show in Favorites.
- Your new folder now shows up at the top of your navigation (as well as in its current location toward the end of your navigation).
- Now, you can manually move emails into the newly created folder and they will no longer auto-delete after 16 months.
Detailed guide (with screenshots)
- Open Outlook Client.
- First, create a top-level personal folder:
- In the left-side navigation, right-click on your account name. (Do not right-click on your Inbox or any of the other folders, as that will just create a subfolder.)
- In the dropdown menu, click New Folder…
- A new folder appears underneath your account name. Rename the folder as desired. Once created, the folder will jump toward the end of your left-side navigation.
- If you like, you can "favorite" your new folder so that it also shows up at the top of your navigation:
- Right-click on the folder and click Show in Favorites.
- Your new folder now shows up at the top of your navigation (as well as in its current location toward the end of your navigation).
- Now, you can manually move emails into the newly created folder and they will no longer auto-delete after 16 months.
Retain emails in Outlook Client for Mac
Quick guide
- Open Outlook Client.
- First, create a top-level personal folder:
- In the left-side navigation, right-click (control + click) on your account name. (Do not right-click on your Inbox or any of the other folders, as that will just create a subfolder.)
- In the dropdown menu, click New Folder.
- A new folder ("Untitled Folder") appears toward the end of your left-side navigation. Rename the folder as desired.
- If you like, you can "favorite" your new folder so that it also shows up at the top of your navigation:
- Hover over the folder name and click on the star icon that appears to the right of its name. Or you can right-click (control + click) on the folder and click Add to Favorites.
- Your new folder now shows up at the top of your navigation (as well as in its current location toward the end of your navigation).
- Now, you can manually move emails into the newly created folder and they will no longer auto-delete after 16 months.
Detailed guide (with screenshots)
- Open Outlook Client.
- First, create a top-level personal folder:
- In the left-side navigation, right-click (control + click) on your account name. (Do not right-click on your Inbox or any of the other folders, as that will just create a subfolder.)
- In the dropdown menu, click New Folder.
- A new folder ("Untitled Folder") appears toward the end of your left-side navigation. Rename the folder as desired.
- If you like, you can "favorite" your new folder so that it also shows up at the top of your navigation:
- Hover over the folder name and click on the star icon that appears to the right of its name.
- Alternatively, you can right-click (control + click) on the folder and click Add to Favorites.
- Your new folder now shows up at the top of your navigation (as well as in its current location toward the end of your navigation).
- Now, you can manually move emails into the newly created folder and they will no longer auto-delete after 16 months.
Retain emails in Outlook OWA (Outlook for Web)
Quick guide
- Log into https://usc.edu/office365 using your USC NetID.
- First, create a top-level personal folder:
- In the left-side navigation, right-click (control + click) on Folders. (Do not right-click on your Inbox or any of the other folders, as that will just create a subfolder.)
- In the dropdown menu, click Create new folder.
- A new folder appears toward the end of your left-side navigation. Rename the folder as desired.
- If you like, you can "favorite" your new folder so that it also shows up at the top of your navigation:
- Right-click (control + click) on the folder and click Add to Favorites.
- Your new folder now shows up at the top of your navigation (as well as in its current location toward the end of your navigation).
- Now, you can manually move emails into the newly created folder and they will no longer auto-delete after 16 months.
Detailed guide (with screenshots)
- Log into https://usc.edu/office365 using your USC NetID.
- First, create a top-level personal folder:
- In the left-side navigation, right-click (control + click) Folders. (Do not right-click on your Inbox or any of the other folders, as that will just create a subfolder.)
- In the dropdown menu, click Create new folder.
- A new folder appears toward the end of your left-side navigation. Rename the folder as desired.
- If you like, you can "favorite" your new folder so that it also shows up at the top of your navigation:
- Right-click (control + click) on the folder and click Add to Favorites.
- Your new folder now shows up at the top of your navigation (as well as in its current location toward the end of your navigation).
- Now, you can manually move emails into the newly created folder and they will no longer auto-delete after 16 months.
Double-checking that the email will no longer auto-delete
To verify that the email will indeed be retained indefinitely and is no longer subject to auto-deletion once the 16-month retention period expires, we recommend viewing the email in Outlook 365/OWA (online).
Retaining an email indefinitely in Gmail
Dornsife faculty are eligible to opt in to Gmail accounts. Although Gmail is supported by ITS, you can also refer to our guides for retaining emails in Gmail beyond the 16-month retention period:
Additional tips
- We do not recommend using a .PST file to backup your emails, as .PST files are prone to becoming corrupt
- Do not use words that appear in system default folder names in the top-level folder(s) you create:
-
Examples of words not to use: inbox, deleted, drafts, junk, sent, archive
- The "Archive"/"Online Archive" folder is still a default Microsoft folder, so emails and attachments in this folder are subject to auto-deletion