Graduating Students Google Workspace FAQ

Google recently announced the end of unlimited storage in Google Workspace (Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Google Drive, Photos, YouTube, etc.) for all its customers. This change will impact research universities such as Case Western Reserve particularly hard. Currently, CWRU has about four times the storage in Google Workspace as will be allowed after limits are put in place in the summer of 2024. As a result, the university needs to make significant changes in how it administers Google Workspace.

Going forward, graduating students will retain access to Google Workspace for 180 days after your graduation ceremony. CWRU provides a redirecting service so graduates can have their CWRU email delivered to the personal email address of their choice. However, after the 180 days, graduates will no longer have access to their university Google Workspace account that includes, but is not limited to, Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drive, Photos, YouTube and any other Google service through your CWRU account.

  1. After your graduation ceremony, you will have access to the Email Routing tool to redirect your email to a personal, external address.
  2. Within 180 days of graduation, download or transfer any Google Workspace data you would like to retain. See details below.

Google does offer a service that allows you to transfer your email and Google Drive documents to a personal Google account. You can transfer other Google content and do additional setup that essentially moves your CWRU Google Account to another Google account.

  1. Sign up for a personal Google account/Gmail address, or use a personal Gmail account you already have.
  2. After graduation, use CWRU's Email Routing tool to redirect messages sent to your university address to a personal account.
  3. Transfer your CWRU email to your personal Gmail address. See question 3 in this FAQ, "How can graduates download or transfer their CWRU Google Data?", specifically items 1 and 2 for details and important considerations.
    • You will want to check your storage in Google to determine whether you will need to purchase additional storage before the migration.
    • It also can help to empty the trash for Google Drive and Gmail before the transfer.
    • You can purchase additional Google storage if you need storage beyond the free 15 GB provided with a free account.
  4. Transfer other Google content as desired, such as Google Calendar, Contacts, Photos, etc. See items 3 and 4 below in "How can graduates download or transfer their CWRU Google Data" for details.
  5. Set up your personal email to send email using your CWRU email address. See question 5 of this FAQ, "Will graduates be able to send email using their CWRU email addresses after they lose access to their CWRU Google Accounts?", for details. Note: you can make the default sending address your CWRU address.

Once those steps are done, you will have all of your CWRU email in the mailbox of the personal Gmail account and you will be able to receive email sent to your CWRU email address from that account and even send email as your CWRU email address from that account.

  1. Google makes it very easy to transfer your university email and Drive documents to a free personal Google account.
    • See Google’s guide for detailed instructions. You can also export your CWRU Google Calendars and Contacts and import them into your personal Google account.
    • Note: this process will transfer all of your email and Google Drive documents, including trash and files shared with you. You want to check your storage in Google to determine whether you will need to purchase additional storage before the migration. See item 2 below about how to purchase more storage for a personal Google account.
    • It also can help to empty the trash for Google Drive and Gmail before the transfer.
    • Finally, if you do not want to transfer all of your Google Drive Documents, see the Google Takeout option in item 3 below, which allows you to pick which folders you would like to back up.
  2. You can purchase additional Google storage if you need storage beyond the free 15 GB provided with a free account.
  3. You can also use Google Takeout to download all or selected portions of your Google Workspace data (Contacts, Calendar, Chat, etc.) to a local hard drive or a personal cloud storage service you may already be using, such as Dropbox or Microsoft OneDrive. See UTech’s Google Takeout guide for more information.
  4. If you are using Google Photos with your CWRU Google account, follow these steps to move your albums to a personal Gmail account
    1. 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.
    2. Approve the partner request from your personal Google account.
    3. 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.
    4. When the process has fully completed (this may take some time), delete the photos in your CWRU account.

Email sent to the following list will all work with the redirecting service.

  • username@case.edu
  • firstname.lastname@case.edu
  • username@cwru.edu
  • firstname.lastname@cwru.edu

Existing personal email aliases will also continue to work. However, alumni are not able to change, delete or add personal email aliases.

No. Due to changes Google and other email service providers are putting into place for a more secure email environment, the "Send As" feature will not work for alumni.

It depends on the nature of the site’s or application's log in type. If you signed up for a site using your CWRU email address as the login, but set a password specific to that site, it will continue to work with the redirecting service.

However, if the site or application allowed you to log in directly using Google's authentication, i.e. if the Google login directed you to CWRU's Single Sign-On log in page to use your CWRU username and password, you will need to transfer the login to another address or Gmail account.

CWRU's Single Sign On (SSO) page

CWRU's Single Sign-On (SSO) page

Review which sites you have granted access to your Google account on the My Account area. Sign in with your university credentials.

Shared Drives are owned by the institution, not by individual CWRU user accounts. As a result, any Shared Drive you are a member of will not be deleted on after 180 days of graduation. However, since your CWRU account will be disabled at that time, you and any other graduating students with access to the drives will lose access.

If you need to copy data out of the drives, you could:

  • Move the data to your CWRU My Drive and then use one of the migration tools provided by Google to copy the data to a personal Google account or download the data. See the section "How can graduates download or transfer their CWRU Google Data" on this page for details.
  • Or, if you are a manager of the Shared Drive, you could add a personal Google account to the Shared Drive and copy the data directly to the personal Google account.

Per policy, Shared Drives are only for institutional storage, i.e. data that supports the academic, research, or administrative missions of the university. As a result, if you have personal data in Shared Drives, we ask that it be moved to personal storage before 180 days after your graduation.

If there is institutional data in a Shared Drive you manage, we ask that you make sure that a current faculty, staff, or student member of CWRU has access to the drive to ensure there is data continuity. See our Shared Drive FAQ for more details on new relevant policies and procedures.

Graduating Semester Graduation Date 180 Days After Graduation
Spring 2023 May 19, 2023 November 15, 2023
Summer 2023 August 18, 2023 February 14, 2024
Fall 2023 January 19, 2024 July 17, 2024
Spring 2024 May 17, 2024 November 13, 2024

Yes. Although access to Google Workspace is being decommissioned, alumni will continue to have a CWRU account for such uses as logging into SIS, ordering transcripts, accessing some university library services, and sending email with their university email addresses.