Google Workspace FAQ

For more than 15 years, Northwestern has offered full Google accounts to our alumni at no cost. Those accounts have provided alumni with Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Photos, all with unlimited storage. 

Due to a change in Google’s pricing model, the University has decided to remove Google Drive and Google Photos services from alumni Google accounts, a change that many other universities have implemented the past couple of years. Going forward, our alumni Google accounts will include access only to Gmail.  

Effective November 1, 2024, Google will no longer provide unlimited storage to its Google Workspace for Education accounts. We are notifying users on an ongoing basis, beginning with users who had more than 100GB saved in storage. By January 1, 2025, these changes will affect all alumni accounts.

This change affects alumni using @alum.northwestern.edu, and @u.northwestern.edu emails. For users with significant amount of storage, Google Drive and Google Photos will be turned off starting October 1, 2024. The files will be permanently deleted starting October 20, 2024. Dormant accounts will be removed from the service on October 20, 2024.

Please be sure to move any files you have stored in Google Drive and Photos to separate accounts or your local computer. Navigate to Google Takeout, make sure Drive and Google Photos are selected, and export the files using one of Google’s recommended methods. Alternatively, you can transfer data from your Google Drive to another Google Drive using this link and following the instructions: https://takeout.google.com/transfer.

If you are a current student, faculty, or staff member and your account has been misidentified as an alumni account and you need to retain access to your data, please contact consultant@northwestern.edu immediately.

No, if you use mail-forwarding, you do not need to log into your account.

No, all Northwestern Alumni Association (NAA) clubs and other organizations will continue to have access to a limited Google Workspace account.

In order to ensure you maintain access to files, we recommend you go into your account and move the files before the final deadline of October 1, 2024. After that date, if you need assistance, contact consultant@northwestern.edu to open a ticket. Note that we will not be able to recover data starting October 20, 2024.

Deleted accounts are still recoverable for up to 10 days after deletion. We encourage everyone who wants to maintain their account to log in by October 20, 2024. If you need assistance, contact consultant@northwestern.edu to open a ticket.  

Please contact consultant@northwestern.edu for more information.