Congratulations on making it this far and being so close to earning your degree! In the excitement, remember to preserve your hard work before graduation. Don’t lose all the hard work that got you here.
Before you graduate
Forward your UW email address
Email forwarding advisory: Only email sent directly from a UW email address (@uw.edu) can be reliably delivered to the email forwarding address you select on the manage email forwarding page. For more information, please review our email forwarding information page.
During the third week of the second consecutive quarter in which you are not registered as a student, you will receive an email notification stating that computing services for your UW NetID, including your UW Google account and UW Office 365 account, will expire in 14 days and will then be permanently deleted. Note that summer quarter is excluded and does not count towards the deletion timeline.
Click here to review the UW Google Account & Data Deletion timeline for students
Click here to review the UW Office 365 Account & Data Deletion timeline for students
To continue to access emails sent to your UW email address, you must:
- Set your email forwarding address to forward to a non-UW email address.
- Go through your UW email and forward any important email or attachments to a non-UW email address.
- Learn more about migrating your email and data.
- Due Date: During the third week of the second consecutive quarter in which you are not registered as a student (excluding summer quarter), you will receive an email notification stating that computing services for your UW NetID, including your UW Google account and UW Office 365 account, will expire in 14 days and will then be permanently deleted.
Preserve your UW work
After you leave the UW, the documents and data that you created or have stored using UW services will be permanently deleted.
Your work may be useful at some point to create a portfolio for a job search or grad school application. You might also find that you own critical files for ongoing UW work or research that need to be transferred to another person at UW.
Therefore, it’s important to take time to before you graduate go through the UW services (UW Google Drive, UW Office 365 OneDrive for Business, Canvas, etc.) you have used as a student and transfer any documents and data that you wish to preserve.
We strongly recommend that you take care of your UW files ASAP, while you are still a student. Take steps to preserve your UW work now. That way, you can focus on graduation and life beyond without worrying about losing all the hard work that got you there.
- Think about where these documents and data should live.
- If they are for your personal records and use, transfer them to your personal non-UW accounts.
- If they are for use by a UW group or department (e.g., work you did while a UW employee, research for a UW research group, etc.), talk to your manager or instructor about where to transfer files.
- For your Google Drive files:
- Migrate documents and data from your UW Google account to a personal account.
- Find files you own, download them for storage in other accounts, or transfer ownership of the files to another account.
- Due Date: During the third week of the second consecutive quarter in which you are not registered as a student (excluding summer quarter), you will receive an email notification stating that computing services for your UW NetID, including your UW Google account and UW Office 365 account, will expire in 14 days and will then be permanently deleted.
- For your Office 365 files:
- Go through your Office 365 account and associated apps. Download any files that you want to keep and save to your non-UW accounts. Here are some additional file ownership considerations for OneDrive for Business to keep in mind.
- Due Date: During the third week of the second consecutive quarter in which you are not registered as a student (excluding summer quarter), you will receive an email notification stating that computing services for your UW NetID, including your UW Google account and UW Office 365 account, will expire in 14 days and will then be permanently deleted.
- For Canvas files:
- Look over your old Canvas courses and download any documents that you want to preserve.
- Due Date: You will have access to Canvas for five years after you graduate, but an instructor may close or delete a Canvas course at any time. To ensure access, it is good practice to transfer important documents before you leave the university.
- For files saved on U Drive:
- Don’t forget about files you might have stored on U Drive! Access UDrive to see what you might have stored there and how to move those files elsewhere.
- For everything else:
- Before you graduate, take time to think about the apps and services you have used. If they are associated with your UW email address, UW Google account, UW Office 365 account, UW NetID, or are dependent on your student status, make sure to transfer any documents and data that you would like to preserve to a non-UW account. Review additional information around UW account expiration.
Please take a look at the UW’s Graduation and Commencement and After Graduation pages for information around other things you should consider as you head toward graduation. Graduating International students should take a look at the Final Year Checklist for graduating International students.