USC Archived Folder

The USC Archived folder is exempt from the university's one-year email retention policy. It is available to faculty and staff who have a business need to store email on USC's email servers beyond the retention period allowed by university policy. Faculty or staff must apply for the USC Archived folder through the designated authorized signer for their school or division. Once the folder has been created, the account holder will be able to drag and drop email messages into the folder from USC Web Mail or his or her IMAP client.

In order to be exempt from the university's email retention policy, email archival folders must be created by ITS email administrators; archival folders that are created manually by users will be automatically deleted from USC email servers at the end of a year.

Please note:

• Email stored in the USC Archived folder counts toward the standard faculty and staff storage quota of 4GB (gigabytes); the volume of email in the USC Archived folder will limit the capacity of the user's email Inbox.
• Email that has been deleted because of the 365-day automatic deletion policy cannot be restored for any reason.

Instructions for Requesting a USC Archived Folder

If you have a legitimate business need to store email on USC email servers beyond the current retention period, you should contact the authorized signer for your school or division to request a USC Archived folder account. The authorized signer is the dean of your school or the vice president of your division. The authorized signer will require a statement explaining your need for an archival folder.

Your authorized signer must send the request for the creation of your USC Archived folder from his or her USC email account to archive@usc.edu and must include both your USC username and USC ID number. Requests with incomplete information will not be accepted.

Once the request from the authorized signer has been received, ITS will verify the information and create your USC Archived folder. Requests for a USC Archived folder may take up to 5 business days to process. Notification that the account has been created will be sent to your USC email account. Do not archive email until you have received notification from ITS. Please make sure you do not already have a folder named USC Archived in your account. If you do, the email administrators will not be able to proceed with your application.

Instructions for Using the USC Archived Folder

If you use the USC Web Mail client, you can move a message into your USC Archived folder in one of two ways:

• If you are viewing the email you wish to archive in the index view, put a check in the box of the email message or messages that you wish to move to the archival folder. Then choose USC Archived from the Move Messages to Folder menu.
• If you are reading the message you wish to move, pull down the Move Message to Folder menu and choose USC Archived.

If you are using an email client, such as Outlook, or Mozilla Thunderbird or Eudora, and you are using IMAP as the server type, you can move messages into the USC Archived folder by dragging and dropping. For details on how your client handles folders and moving emails, please see the email client documentation.

• Frequently Asked Questions about the Email Archive Folder

If you have questions regarding these settings, please contact the ITS Customer Support Center at 213-740-5555 or email consult@usc.edu.