When individuals leave the university, they are often faced with the difficult and daunting task of separating out all the personal data and services they have associated with their CWRU Google Workspace account. In some cases, there is no means to transfer the data or service. Members of the university, such as supervisors or research Principle Investigators (i.e. PIs), can be faced with the challenge of retaining important institutional data while not retaining the person’s personal data.
As a result, it is better for all members of the CWRU community to keep their personal and university-related lives separate in Google. This is also consistent with the Acceptable Use of Information Technology Policy which stipulates that services should be used for their intended purpose and members of the CWRU community should "... [r]espect the finite capacity of resources and limit use so as not to consume an unreasonable amount of resources or to interfere unreasonably with the activity of others."
UTech has published this guide on how individuals can move any personal data and Google services from a CWRU Google account to a personal Gmail account now. Take advantage of this guide to alleviate the stress of a last minute data migration when you leave the university.
If you do not already have a personal Google account, you can create one for free.
- Open an incognito or private window in your browser so that you are not automatically logged into your CWRU Google account
- Go to https://workspace.google.com/intl/en-US/gmail/
- In the upper right corner, click on the "Create an account" dropdown and select "For my personal use"
- Run through the setup process
Setup for the Transfer
- While signed into your CWRU account create a Google Shared Drive and add your personal Gmail account as a manager to the Shared Drive
- Add a folder in the Shared Drive that will receive all of personal files stored in your My Drive
- Go to your CWRU My Drive, right click on a file or folder and select "Move to". Browse to the folder created above in the Shared Drive and click "Move Here"
- Repeat until all of your personal My Drive folders and files you want to move are in the Shared Drive folder.
More information about this process is found on Google's website.
Transfer the Data
- Open an incognito window, go to Google Shared Drive and sign in with your personal Google account
- Access the folder in the Shared Drive and repeat the same process in steps 3 and 4 above, except moving the folders and files from the Shared Drive to your personal Google account’s My Drive. File ownership will be transferred to your personal account during the move.
- Follow Google's instructions to set up partner sharing, enabling partner sharing from your CWRU account and selecting your personal Google account as your CWRU account's partner.
- Approve the partner request from your personal Google account.
- From your personal Google account, follow Google's instructions in the "Save your partner's photos" expandable section to add the photos in your CWRU account to your personal account.
- When the process has fully completed (this may take some time), delete the photos in your CWRU account.
Note: Apple users can transfer Google Photos to Apple iCloud using the method described on Google's or Apple's web page
There is no mechanism to transfer paid YouTube content between accounts. Contact YouTube support, explaining the situation, and ask for a refund on the paid content in your CWRU YouTube account. Then, purchase the content on your personal YouTube account.
Individuals that wish to transfer their paid Play content from their university account to their personal Google account, will need to request a content transfer from Google by contacting Google Play Support at https://support.google.com/googleplay/gethelp and requesting to transfer Paid Play content between accounts.
Google does not provide a method of transferring ownership of a Scholar Profile to another Google account, so if you leave the university, you will lose a Google Scholar profile associated with your CWRU account.
If you have created a Google Scholar Profile using by your university account, recreate your Scholar Profile using a personal account. Follow the steps on Google's website to begin.
After that is done, delete the Scholar profile tied to your university account so there is only one profile associated to you. To delete it, open Google Scholar while signed into your university account. Click on menu button (upper left) and choose "Settings", then "Account". Click on "Delete Scholar account" and follow the prompts.
Download your Google data from many Google apps using Google Takeout. See the Google Takeout guide.