Information Technology Services - Computing, Networking and Storage
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USC Web Mail Basic Commands

What You Will Need

  • A connection to the Internet.
  • A JavaScript-enabled web browser with SSL support such as Internet Explorer 7.x and up, or Mozilla Firefox 2.x and up.
  • An active account on email.usc.edu.

Internet Explorer on Mac OS does not work with USC Web Mail due to a security certificate bug in Internet Explorer. Other Web browsers such as Firefox and Safari will work.

You don't need to configure Messenger Express before you can use it to check your email. To access Messenger Express, all you have to do is point your browser to https://email.usc.edu

Login procedure

To access Messenger Express, you must log in using your USC username and password. This username and password is also used to access USC PPP (Dial-up) and the PCs in the userlabs. To log in to Messenger Express to check your USC email:

  • In your web browser, go to https://email.usc.edu
  • In the Username field, enter your USC username. For example, if your email address is ttrojan@usc.edu, then your username is ttrojan.
  • In the Password field, enter your password.
  • Click the Log In button.

Login Time-out

As a security feature, the Messenger Express session will time out if it is idle for one hour (60 minutes). In other words, you will be automatically logged out if there is no activity in your Messenger Express window(s) for one hour or more. Please note that the time it takes for you to compose a message does not count as an activity. If your login session times out, please login again to regain access.

Reading Mail

When you login to Messenger Express, you will be taken to your email inbox by default. To read a message, click the subject of that message once.

If you want to access messages in folders other than the Inbox folder, follow the steps below:

  • Click the Folders tab in the upper left of the Messenger Express window.
  • Click the name of the folder you want to access.

Sending a Message

To send a new email message, follow the steps below:

  • Click the Compose icon in the menu bar of the Messenger Express window. The Compose Message window will appear.
  • In the To: field, type the recipient's email address. Multiple addresses should be separated by commas
  • In the Subject: field, type a brief description of your message.
  • Type your message in the text box below. When you are finished, click the Send icon in the upper left corner.

Replying to a Message

For any email message, you can easily compose a reply:

  • While viewing the message, click the Reply icon. A Compose Message window will appear with the To: field already set.
  • Compose your reply and click the Send icon to send your reply.

Deleting a Message

To delete an email message:

  • If the message you want to delete is currently open, simply click the Delete icon and that message will be deleted.
  • If you are looking at the contents of one of your email folders and you want to select multiple messages in that folder for deletion:
    • Click the checkbox in front of all the messages you want to delete.
    • Click the Delete icon.

Creating Folders

You can create new folders to file your email messages. To create a folder:

  • Click the Folders tab.
  • Select the radio button next to the folder in which you want to create a new subfolder.
  • Click the New icon.
  • In the dialog box that appears, type a name for the new folder.
  • Click the OK button.

Deleting Folders

To delete a folder:

  • Click the Folders tab.
  • Select the folder you want to delete by clicking the radio button to the left of the folder.
  • Click the Delete icon.
  • Click the OK button to confirm the deletion of the folder.

Viewing Attachments

To view a file attached to a message:

  • In the message window, click the name of the attached file (next to Attachments in the header section of the message).

Note: GIF and JPEG image attachments are displayed inline. All other attachments such as text documents appear in the Attachments header field.

Saving Attachments

If you receive an attached file, you can save it to a disk on your. To save an attachment:

  • Right click the name of the attached file in the Attachments header field. (In the case of GIF or JPEG imagess, which are displayed inline, you will need to right click the image itself.). A contextual menu will appear.
  • On the menu, choose Save Target As.... A Save As dialog box appears.
  • In the File name: field, enter the name for the attachment to be saved as.
  • Click the Save button.

Sending Attachments

To send an attachment with an outgoing email message:

  • While you are composing a new email message in the Compose Message window, click the Attach icon.
  • Click the Browse button to select the file you want to attach. The Choose File dialog box will appear.
  • Select the file you want to attach.
  • Click the Open button to select the file.
  • Click the Add button to attach the file to your email. You can attach multiple files to your message.
  • Click the Attach button to confirm your attachments and return to your composition.

The Attach File dialog box closes and the name(s) of the file(s) you attached appear(s) in the Attachment header field in the Compose Message window.

Note: Make sure to limit the total size of all attachments to a single email message to a maximum of 20 MB.



Last updated: Monday, December 10, 2007, 09:38AM PST