When students graduate or leave Stony Brook University, their Google email and Google Drive accounts are deactivated 200 days after the last class attended. While these students can no longer log in, the files they have created are still stored by Google and remain accessible by anyone who these files were shared with. 

What’s Changing

On January 17th, 2023, all inactive Undergraduate Student Google accounts, specifically those who left Stony Brook University before Summer 2022, will be deleted. This elimination of inactive Student files/accounts is a best practice for data management and will assist SBU with data and records storage efforts.

What Will Be Impacted

Google Drive files that were created and shared by now inactive Undergraduate Students will be permanently deleted, including:

• Google Docs

• Google Forms (including responses from Google Forms - either saved to a Google Sheet or as responses in the form)

• Google Sheets 

• Google Slides

• Google Sites

• Google Shared Calendars

• Any non-Google format files shared with you (datasheets in Excel, Word files, scanned experiment results, PDFs, images, etc.)

Save or Migrate Online Files Prior to January 17th

Please take some time over the next few weeks to access and review your current Google Drive files in order to ensure that any files you may still need, which were shared with you by a now inactive Undergraduate Student, are saved and migrated. We recommend:

1. Identifying files owned by someone else from your Google Drive, as well as sorting your files by the last date modified to view a list of most-recently-used files.

2. Make a copy of the files that you will still need.

3. Move files from your personal Google Drive to a Google Shared Drive (please note that this is not the same as “sharing a file” or folder). 

Recommended Google Drive Best Practices

Faculty and Staff

• If you/your team does not have a Google Shared Drive, we encourage you to request one, so that you may store all critical, work-related files in one centralized location.
• Create a calendar reminder to review your Google Drive periodically to save or migrate any student-created/shared files (we recommend doing this every quarter). While this is the first time SBU will be deleting inactive Undergraduate Student Google files, we will continue to do so as Undergraduate Students leave the University.

Students

• Prior to leaving SBU, please transfer ownership of any work-related files saved on either your personal or Stony Brook Google account to your supervisor. This will help avoid future data loss and ensure your work will remain on SBU’s servers. 

Should you require assistance, please visit the DoIT website for self-help materials or to submit a service request.

Stony Brook’s Division of Information Technology

https://it.stonybrook.edu/