/
Leaving Carleton - Your Digital Departure

Leaving Carleton - Your Digital Departure

Overview

As you transition to post-Carleton life, there are a few things you should take care of before you depart regarding digital materials that are tied to your Carleton account.

You may have files in cloud storage that you want to keep. You may be the owner of resources for an organization or committee which need transferred to someone else. And there's likely to be a lot of email that you may (or may not) want to keep for future reference.

This page provides a reminder of the digital aspects of your Carleton career and how to approach the transition to your personal digital world. It also includes links to pages in our Knowledge Base with more detailed instructions on how to do so.

tl;dr Just the Highlights

I really don’t want to read everything below. What are the key points?

  • Accounts expire for real: there is no such thing as temporary reactivation.

  • Transfer your email: but spend time curating - you probably don’t want all of it.

  • Transfer your cloud files: check storage limits on personal accounts - it’s probably lower than Carleton.

  • Transfer ownership of shared files: shared files disappear with the owning account.

  • Update your email on external accounts: before your Carleton account expires.

  • Start sooner rather than later: this all takes more time than you expect.

The sections below provide more information on all of the above.

 

Account Expiration Timelines

The following shows the standard account expiration timelines for Carleton students, staff, and faculty following their departure from campus. As always, there are exceptions to every rule, but this will provide you with an idea of the amount of time you have to complete your digital departure. (For more details, please refer to the ITS Account Eligibility article).

 

  • Students (Undergraduate Degree):  Student accounts expire at the end of July of their graduating year

  • Faculty and Instrument / Vocal Instructors:  Accounts expire 30 days after their last work date

  • Staff (Bi-Weekly, Exempt, Union):  Accounts expire on their last work day.

 

To our graduating Seniors in 2025, the deadline for reviewing, moving, and extracting your digital files is July 31st, 2025.

After that date, you will lose access to all digital resources, including all Google apps (Gmail, Drive, etc.) and data will be unrecoverable. Media stored in Carleton Supported hosting tools - such as Google Drive, Imagen, and Panopto - that you intend to preserve must be downloaded or transferred by July 31st or it will be irrevocably deleted.

 

Update External Accounts Using Your Carleton Email Address

You should plan to update your contact information on any external accounts that use your Carleton email address before it is shut down.

For example: if you have a social media account, or an Amazon account, that you created using your Carleton email address, you will need to update that before you lose access to your Carleton account. 

Most sites want to send a confirmation email to the original address as a security precaution, to ensure that the owner of the account is authorizing the change. If you try to make this change after your Carleton account is deactivated, you won't be able to receive that confirmation.

 

It is not possible for ITS to "temporarily reactivate" your Carleton email account to accommodate this. The account is not simply deactivated, it is deleted and no longer exists. 

 

Email: Transferring, Archiving, and Notifying Others

When your account expires, messages in your Carleton mailbox vanish and are non-recoverable; mail sent to your address will be returned to the sender.

We have included links below to instructions on how to set up an auto-reply, how to transfer your email to a different account, and how to archive your Carleton email (as an alternative to transferring).

While it's tempting to simply move all of your email to another account, we suggest that you consider archiving your Carleton email instead. Archiving email has the advantage that you are simply downloading and storing the email for future reference, in case you need to refer back to it in the future. It helps to keep your old Carleton email separate from your current (or new) email, in a searchable location for those times that you need to refer back to it.

 

Gmail icon

 

Email: Add Personal Account to Workday

Before graduating, you need to add a personal email address to your Workday account. After July, you will no longer be able to access Workday (e.g. to get your 2025 W-2) unless you have your personal account set as the “Home (Primary)” email address in your account.

 

Cloud Storage: Transferring and Downloading Your Files

When your account expires, you will lose access to your Carleton Google account (including Drive), as well as Dropbox if you were using it. Shortly thereafter, your files will be irretrievably deleted.

 

During your time at Carleton, you have undoubtedly written and created a lot of material which is stored digitally in various places on our network: Course assignments in Moodle, that Photoshop masterpiece stored on Drive, collaborative documents with Google Docs, or even a personal or class website. Once your Carleton account expires, you will lose access to these files which will eventually be deleted from our systems. The links below provide more information on accessing and transferring these types of files.

Cloud storage logos

If you're looking for more information on managing your files on Google Drive, including details on how to maintain or transfer them from your Carleton account, please refer to this presentation created by Academic Technologies.

 

 

Shared Files: Transferring Ownership

When your account expires, files owned by your account which have been shared with others will also expire.

If you have been an active member of a department, organization, college committee, or a perhaps a student group during your time on campus, you may be the owner of files that will be required by others after you leave Carleton. It is critical that you transfer ownership of the files to someone else before you depart.

Files stored in Google Drive or Dropbox under your Carleton account for which you are the Owner will be inaccessible to anyone with whom they were shared when your account expires, and will be permanently deleted soon after.

 

 

Passing the Baton: Groups, Files, and More

Mailing lists and organization resources that have no on-campus owners will be scheduled for deletion, so please pass them along to someone who isn't graduating.

If you have been an active member of an organization, a college committee, or a perhaps a student group during your time on campus, it is possible that you are the designated owner or administrator of either the corresponding mailing list or other network resources. Before you leave Carleton, you should be sure to transfer such ownership to your successor (or other member of the group). Mailing lists that have no on-campus owners will be scheduled for deletion, so make arrangement for a new owner before you depart.

Student organizations whose leaders have all graduated may be considered inactive by the CSA, so if the organization is to continue, you will need to hand it off to the next generation. You will need to designate next year's org leader and transfer network folder and web resources to help.

 

  • Mailing List Ownership
    All mailing lists you own must be transferred to someone who will still be on campus. Any lists that end up without a valid owner will eventually be closed.

  • Student Org Resources
    If you lead a student organization, you must transfer ownership of online resources to someone who isn't graduating.

  • Drive / Google Docs - Transfer Ownership
    Any (non-personal) Google Drive files for which you are the owner must be transferred to a new owner.

  • Dropbox - Transfer Ownership
    Any (non-personal) Dropbox files or folders for which you are the owner must be transferred to a new owner.

 

DUO: Two Factor Authentication

DUO two factor will remain in place on your Carleton account until it fully transitions to an alumni account. In the event that you change or upgrade your cell phone this summer, having DUO backup codes will make setting up your new phone a lot easier.

 

Your Alumni Account and Staying Connected

ITS provides several computing services to Carleton alumni, to help ease the transition into the post-Carleton world and to provide ways of keeping in touch with other alumni and the Carleton community. You will continue to have access to web resources like the Hub and the Alumni Directory after graduation. For services like these, you will continue to sign in using your current username and password.

 

 

Library Resources

Certain access and licenses granted through the Gould Library to current community members will change once your account moves to alumni status. Our Reference and Instruction colleagues at the Gould Library offer the following guide for graduating seniors in particular.