Somehow, you got personal data in your UW Google inbox or Google Drive (we won't ask...); use these instructions to move it safely into a personal Google account, where it belongs. |
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Overview
Google provides tooling that will allow you to save UW Gmail email and UW Google Drive files when you depart the UW.
Before saving email and files, please review the
UW Appropriate Use page and note that while UW Google is FERPA-aligned, personal Google accounts are not.
Change UW email forwarding to a personal Gmail email address
Before migrating data, you can change your UW email forwarding to your personal Gmail email address so new email sent to your UW email address will be delivered to your personal Gmail email address: Click here to change your UW email forwarding to your personal Gmail email address
UW Google Drive File Ownership
When using Google Takeout, we strongly recommend using two different browsers for the process, e.g. log into Google Chrome with your UW Google account and log into Firefox, Safari, Edge, etc. with your personal @gmail.com account. Utilizing two Google accounts in the same browser frequently leads to errors.
Google offers two ways to save your data:
- Google Takeout will allow you to download UW Gmail email and UW Google Drive files
- Google Takeout Transfer copies UW Gmail email and Google Drive files to another Google account (e.g. your personal Gmail account)
Both methods are automatic
but may not transfer every email and file. When Google fails to transfer an email or file, you will receive an email with a list of files that did not transfer that looks like this:
- Null (null)
- Null (null)
- Null (null)
Unfortunately, Google will not display the file name that did not transfer, but the number of failures corresponds to the number of "- null (null) entries". In the example above, three failures were recorded by Google. Tracking down the failures requires comparing what is in your UW Google account vs. what copied to your other Google account.
Usually, larger items and unusual file types are the cause of failures. Tips:
- Google Drive's quota page shows the largest files in Google Drive
- Google's Gmail search is the best way to find large email
- This sample search will find all attachments larger than 10 megabytes
- You may also want to look for uncommon file types and attachments. Documents, PDFs, and pictures all tend to transfer without issue.
Once the file or email attachment that won't transfer is found, it will need to be manually downloaded:
Migrating your UW Google Contacts to a personal Google account
Click here for instructions to migrate UW Google contacts to a personal Google account