Email is part of your Office 365 account.
Remember, your USC Aiken email address will be your USCA Username (Students call this PacerStudent username) plus @usca.edu. For example, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
While most account holders are able to log in for the first time without issue, some do run occasionally into a problem. If you have any issues with your first login, please take the following troubleshooting steps. These are the same steps we will walk you through if you call the Help Desk for assistance. If you're still unable to login, give us a call or stop by, and let us know what you found while completing these steps.
Basic email troubleshooting
Newly Admitted or Transferring Student?
Has it been at least 72-hours since you were accepted? If not, you should check back again in a day or two.
Transfer and "Change of Campus" Students may also run into issues if they were not properly released from their previous campus before being accepted by the USC Aiken Office of Admissions. Even if you only took college credit courses in high school, the system may still treat you as a "change of campus" student. Please call your old Admissions Office to ensure you were properly released. Then contact the USC Aiken Office of Admissions at 803-641-3366. Explain the issue you're having to them and let them know the Help Desk has asked you to check that you are properly accepted after a transfer. Once this is completed, please try the steps above again.
Still can't get in?
If you are still unable to log into email after completing all of the steps above, please contact the Help Desk with any issues you've found during troubleshooting.
Having this information will allow us to quickly assist you in resolving the issue. We may be able to help you directly ourselves, or we may get this information from you to work with our counterparts in Columbia to resolve the issue.
To log into your email account, simply click the Email link at the bottom of the USC Aiken website, or go to: https://portal.microsoftonline.com
You'll then be taken directly to your Inbox and can begin using email.
Connecting a mobile device to your USCA Email account is fairly simple. We've included basic instructions below. If you run into any issues, please bring your device to the Help Desk. We're happy to walk through the setup process with you.
Setup an iOS device
Setup an Android device
Setup for Windows Phone
Help for Issues
If you run into any issues setting up your device, you may want to check Microsoft's help site for instructions specific to your device. You'll find those on the Office Web App Help page.
Office 365 and email for students will now be hosted on the same servers as those for USC Aiken faculty and staff, so you'll need to make a slight change to your email address and how you sign-in.
What do I need to do?
Just change the @email.usca.edu portion of your email address to @usca.edu and sign-in using your PacerStudent password instead of your Blackboard password. Otherwise, use email like you always do.
You should also notify anyone outside the University who sends to your old account that you have a new address. You might want to setup an Automatic reply to notify anyone who still sends to your old account. Instructions can be found below to set up automatic replies.
Forwarding was setup over the summer to make sure any messages that went to your new account before you set it up would be forwarded to your old account. We didn't want you to miss anything. Now that you have your new account setup, you need to turn that off or you could end up with an email loop...which wouldn't be a good idea.
To turn off the forwarding we setup for everyone...
A simple way to notify people of your new email account is to set up an automatic reply on your old account to send a reply message giving them your new account information. It's easy to do.
Now anytime someone sends a message to your old account they'll automatically get a reply alerting them to your new address and suggesting they update their address book.
IMPORTANT: It's still best to directly notify anyone important about your new address. You will also need to change the address in the settings of any accounts which might use the address like the account on your bank's website.
New messages sent to your old @email.usca.edu account won't be forwarded automatically, but again that's pretty easy to correct. To make sure you don't miss any messages to your old address, you should set-up a forward from the old account to your new account.
This won't copy over any old messages though. If you'd prefer to have a copy of the old mail AND have messages forwarded, see the next section "Will email from my old account copy over automatically to my new account?".
Just follow the instructions below to forwarding email.
New messages to your old account will now forward over to your new account. There may be a slight delay between your old account receiving a new message and it being delivered to your new account.
IMPORTANT: You may want to send a test message to your old account just to make sure it does forward to your new account. If it doesn't for some reason, please contact the Help Desk for assistance.
The email from your old account at @email.usca.edu won't be copied over automatically to the new account.
If you want a copy of all the old messages moved to the new account, you'll need to do that manually, but it's pretty easy.
You can link your two accounts, which will transfer a copy of your old email from your @email.usca.edu account to your new @usca.edu account and forward any new messages as well. You can do so in just a few simple steps.
Method 1 (works for about 80% of those who try it)
If the steps above don't work for you, you'll see a message saying a secured connection couldn't be established. If that happens to you, just do the following additional steps.
Method 2 (works for everyone else)
If you still can't connect your accounts you will need to reset your Blackboard password, wait about 5-minutes and try again.
Once your accounts are connected, your old messages will begin downloading automatically in the background. You do not need to stay logged in for this to occur. It may take up to a day for all old messages to copy from the old account to the new.
IMPORTANT: You should begin seeing messages copied over to your new account within a few hours. If you haven't seen the copy start within 24-hours, this procedure may not work for your account. In that case, please contact the Help Desk so we can help you import your old mail.
There are several good reasons:
If you run into any issues during any part of the steps above, please contact the Help Desk for assistance.