Configuring Your Email Client for Office 365

ITS highly recommends using the Outlook email client or Outlook Web App (OWA) to access your USC Office 365 email. This page provides links to documentation on how to configure your email client to access Office 365. When configuring your email client to work with your USC mailbox, we recommend selecting the Microsoft 365 setup wizard (choose when setting up Outlook). If you are using an email client other than Outlook and Microsoft 365 or Office 365 is not a setup option, we recommend selecting the Exchange setup option and only using the IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) option if there is no other choice.

Exchange Versus IMAP

There are several advantages to setting up your email client to use “Microsoft 365”, “Office 365”, or “Exchange” rather than IMAP settings. Microsoft 365 only requires that you provide your email address and password for set up; IMAP, however, requires additional server information. Microsoft 365 also provides direct access to the USC calendar that is a part of your Office 365 account.

If you are using Microsoft Outlook as your email client, you should use the default Microsoft 365 Account type. At this time, ITS also supports connecting with other compatible mail clients using the Exchange and IMAP4 with OAuth2 connection methods, although Exchange is highly preferred.

Setting Up an Office 365 Account Using Microsoft 35

For documentation on setting up your Office 365 account on an email client using Exchange, please see the links at the bottom of this page.

NOTE: The versions of Outlook that are listed below are the only versions that are supported by Microsoft for use with Office 365.

Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise
Outlook 2019
Outlook 2016

Setting Up an Office 365 Account Using IMAP and SMTP with OAuth2 Authentication

Below you will find information on configuring ITS-supported email clients to access your Office 365 account using IMAP and SMTP with OAuth2 authentication. You will need to know your Office 365 email address (based on your USC NetID username), password, and the Office 365 server settings in order to successfully set up your email client. ITS is no longer permitting new accounts to connect with IMAP and SMTP without OAuth2. Existing accounts configured to connect using IMAP and SMTP will need to update their client and client configuration to an OAuth2 compatible client soon as ITS will no longer support basic authentication beginning in early 2021.

IMAP and SMTP with OAuth2 Server Settings

The following are the incoming and outgoing IMAP server settings for Office 365.

Setting	IMAP (incoming)	SMTP (outgoing)
Server Name	outlook.office365.com	smtp.office365.com
Port Number	993	465 or 587
Encryption Method	SSL/TLS	STARTTLS
Authentication Method	OAuth2	OAuth2
Username	NetID@usc.edu (which maybe different from your preferred email address)	NetID@usc.edu (which maybe different from your preferred email address)

The following screenshots provide summary information on how to connect your email client to Office 365 using the Microsoft 365 and IMAP/SMTP (non-Outlook email clients) protocol.