What happens to my Williams account?
Faculty
Faculty accounts are disabled three months after leaving the college. Forwarding and auto-reply will also end at that time. See our guide for instructions on how to set up auto-reply or forwarding for those three months.
Staff
Staff accounts are disabled on the separation date. Forwarding to a personal account is not allowed. To request an auto-reply message, please have the supervisor contact OIT at itsupport@williams.edu.
Graduating Seniors
For graduating seniors, accounts will remain open until July 1, upon which they're closed and will be deleted shortly after. If you want to save your email, docs, photos, drive files or any other Google data, you will need to transfer or download that data before July 1.
If you created a Microsoft account to access Office apps like Word, or to save files to OneDrive, you will lose access to those as well.
What should I do before I lose access to my account?
Set Up A Vacation Responder (Auto Reply)
Faculty and staff leaving the college should set up an auto-reply message to inform others that their account will no longer be active and provide an alternative email address for future communication.
See: Send an automatic reply when you're out of office
For students, you can set up Alumni email forwarding: https://alumni.williams.edu/articles/emf/
Save/Migrate Email and Google Workspace Data
There are several options for saving and transferring your personal Google data:
Google Transfer will move all emails and Drive data to a personal Google account. Make sure you have enough space on your personal account to store all the data being transferred (usually 15 GB). Check how much storage you are using and how much you have available from the Storage link in your Google Drive.
Note: Google Transfer can take several weeks to finish, so begin the process as soon as possible.
Google Takeout is more selective than Transfer, in that you can choose which Drive and email folders to save. You can also transfer YouTube content, Google Photos and other services.
Download files onto your computer, including Google Photos.
What About Files That Should Remain with the College?
It's important to change ownership of any files or folders that should remain with the college to avoid colleagues losing access, or in the case for graduating seniors, those files being permanently deleted. Remember any files you create in Google are owned by you, even if you created them in a folder you don't own.
Note: Shared Drives are different, files you create in a Shared Drive have no owner and will remain there.
What type of files should you transfer ownership or move into a Shared Drive?
- Documentation and other work done for a department.
- Research or collaborative work done for a professor.
- Any files or photos associated with an RSO or other student organization.
Here are directions for changing ownership of files and folders in Drive.
You can also move files and folders you own to a Shared Drive for preservation. This would be a good solution if you own content that should stay with an RSO or student group, since transferring ownership to another student may lead to deletion when they graduate and their account is closed. Your professor or a Williams staff member can create the Shared Drive, give you Content Manager rights, then you can move your data there for them to manage. Or email stchelp@williams.edu to have OIT create a Shared Drive for you.
Note: If you are part of a student group and think you may have records of historical value, please reach out to the
Records Manager who can help you digitally preserve your materials for future access. We want to make sure the diverse voices of students do not decay in the digital deluge!
Special instructions for Google Photos
Google Photos are a little different and there are several methods you can use to transfer them to a personal account: Google Photo resources
If you’d like to save your Sites data please see: https://sites.williams.edu/information-for-graduating-students/
Maintain access to your Adobe assets
For soon-to-be-graduates, you can migrate your Creative Cloud assets from school-assigned accounts to new Creative Cloud free membership accounts. Take the steps outlined here so you can take your assets with you.
Your new personal account is a Creative Cloud Free membership, which includes 2GB of storage. If your school account has more than 2GB of content, don't worry, all of your content will be migrated. However, you cannot add more content to the new personal account until storage space is freed up.
Keep in mind assets will be transferred to a NEW Adobe ID , not an existing personal Adobe ID.
Transfer other accounts to a non-Williams email address
If you created accounts with LinkedIn, Facebook, or other non-Williams services using your username@williams.edu, you will want to change the login email to a personal email.
If you don't have a secondary/personal email, you can set up a Gmail account easily by using the Create Account feature at the sign in page.