Overview
USC maintains a 16-month email retention period which applies to all employee email accounts, including:
- Faculty and staff accounts
- Emeriti and affiliate (iVIP) accounts
- Shared organizational accounts
This means that emails in your inbox and other default folders are automatically and permanently deleted 16 months from the date that they are received, sent, or drafted. Once auto-deleted, these emails cannot be recovered by ITS.
To act in advance and prevent specific emails from being auto-deleted, follow the guide below before your emails reach the end of the 16-month retention period. You may want to prevent auto-deletion for:
- Your own record-keeping purposes
- Compliance with federal, state, or local laws
- Compliance with university policies or directives that require you to keep certain records on file for a number of years
Understanding which emails will be auto-deleted
Emails are auto-deleted after 16 months if they are in a default folder (a folder created by Outlook, not by you) or in a subfolder that you created within a default folder. Default folders include:
- Inbox
- Drafts
- Sent Items
- Deleted Items
- Conversation History
- Junk Email
- Archive and Online Archive
View an email's auto-delete date
The auto-delete date appears above the email message in all versions of Outlook for desktop except Legacy Outlook for Mac. If you are using Legacy Outlook for Mac, we recommend that you either update to New Outlook for Mac or log into Outlook 365 (online) at https://usc.edu/office365.
The auto-delete date does not appear in the Outlook app for mobile or tablet devices.
In the past, the auto-delete date sometimes did not appear for shared org accounts in Outlook for Windows, but this has been resolved by Microsoft and you can now see the auto-delete date whether viewing emails for your own account or for a shared org account.
Retaining emails in Outlook for Windows
To retain emails in Outlook and avoid having them auto-deleted after 16 months, you must:
Quick guide
- Create top-level personal folders. To do so, right-click on your account and select Create new folder or New Folder. Make sure not to right-click your inbox or other default (Outlook-created) folders.
- Once you name and create a top-level personal folder, be aware that the folder will appear below default folders in the list.
- Move any emails you want to retain from your inbox or other default folders into these top-level personal folders. You can select multiple emails and drag them into the folders.
- (Optional) To further organize top-level personal folders, you can create subfolders by right-clicking a personal folder. Emails in these subfolders will also be retained.
Detailed guide (with screenshots)
- Create top-level personal folders. To do so, right-click on your account and select Create new folder or New Folder. Make sure not to right-click your inbox or other default (Outlook-created) folders.
- Once you name and create a top-level personal folder, be aware that the folder will appear below default folders in the list.
- Move any emails you want to retain from your inbox or other default folders into these top-level personal folders. You can select multiple emails and drag them into the folders.
- (Optional) To further organize top-level personal folders, you can create subfolders by right-clicking a personal folder. Emails in these subfolders will also be retained.
Retaining emails in Outlook for Mac
To retain emails in Outlook and avoid having them auto-deleted after 16 months, you must:
Quick guide
- Create top-level personal folders. To do so, right-click on your account and select New Folder. Make sure not to right-click your inbox or other default (Outlook-created) folders.
- Once you name and create a top-level personal folder, be aware that the folder will appear below default folders in the list.
- Move any emails you want to retain from your inbox or other default folders into these top-level personal folders. You can select multiple emails and drag them into the folders.
- (Optional) To further organize top-level personal folders, you can create subfolders by right-clicking a personal folder. Emails in these subfolders will also be retained.
Detailed guide (with screenshots)
- Create top-level personal folders. To do so, right-click on your account and select New Folder. Make sure not to right-click your inbox or other default (Outlook-created) folders.
- Once you name and create a top-level personal folder, be aware that the folder will appear below default folders in the list.
- Move any emails you want to retain from your inbox or other default folders into these top-level personal folders. You can select multiple emails and drag them into the folders.
- (Optional) To further organize top-level personal folders, you can create subfolders by right-clicking a personal folder. Emails in these subfolders will also be retained.
Retaining emails in Outlook 365 (online)
To retain emails in Outlook and avoid having them auto-deleted after 16 months, you must:
Quick guide
- Create top-level personal folders. To do so, click Create new folder at the bottom of the folder list. Do not right-click your inbox or other default (Outlook-created) folders.
- Once you name and create a top-level personal folder, be aware that the folder will appear below default folders in the list.
- Move any emails you want to retain from your inbox or other default folders into these top-level personal folders. You can select multiple emails and drag them into the folders.
- (Optional) To further organize top-level personal folders, you can create subfolders by right-clicking on a personal folder. Emails in these subfolders will also be retained.
Detailed guide (with screenshots)
- Create top-level personal folders. To do so, click Create new folder at the bottom of the folder list. Do not right-click your inbox or other default (Outlook-created) folders.
- Once you name and create a top-level personal folder, be aware that the folder will appear below default folders in the list.
- Move any emails you want to retain from your inbox or other default folders into these top-level personal folders. You can select multiple emails and drag them into the folders.
- (Optional) To further organize top-level personal folders, you can create subfolders by right-clicking on a personal folder. Emails in these subfolders will also be retained.
Using Outlook rules to automatically move emails
In addition to manually moving emails, you can use Outlook rules to automatically move or copy incoming emails to a top-level personal folder. To do so:
- Create a top-level personal folder (or subfolder).
- Create an Outlook rule to automatically copy or move the email to that folder.
For detailed instructions, refer to our guide:
Note that the Outlook rules apply to incoming emails only. There is no way to automatically route outgoing emails into top-level personal folders. One workaround is that you can CC or BCC yourself on outgoing emails, and create an Outlook rule for those emails once they arrive in your inbox.
Retaining emails 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
- Avoid using a .PST file to back up your emails: .PST files are prone to becoming corrupt
- When naming a top-level personal folder, do not use words that appear in the default folders' names (for example: inbox, deleted, drafts, junk, sent, archive)
Additional resources
The following guides are available from ITS:
A note about the record retention policy
The email retention period 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/
For more information, refer to the following resources: