An Update to Interlochen Arts Academy Alumni Email Accounts

Google announced the end of unlimited storage in Google Workspace (Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Google Drive, Photos) for all its customers, and has placed a storage cap on organizations that is shared across all accounts in the organization.

Because of this change and our commitment to provide the best experience and tools to our current students and employees, we have made the difficult decision to no longer keep Interlochen accounts for students who have graduated or choose to not return to Interlochen, 18 months after their departure.

Each student account will have a limit of 200GB of storage in your Interlochen account. This limit currently covers 99% of all students and we feel represents a fair use of the total storage space Interlochen receives from Google.

If you would like to keep your data after 18 months from departing Interlochen, please read below for a short frequently asked questions section about this change. If you do not want to transfer data from your Interlochen Google account (Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Google Drive, Photos), you do not need to take any action, it will simply be deleted 18 months after your departure from Interlochen.

What should I do to stay in contact with Interlochen after I graduate or leave Interlochen?

1. Update your preferred, non-Interlochen email address and any other contact information by visiting this page.
2. Be sure to download or transfer any data you wish to keep out of your Interlochen account before your account is deleted 18 months after you depart.

I am a student, but I also work for Interlochen from time to time. What will happen to my account?

Active employees of Interlochen Center for the Arts will not lose access to their accounts. However, if your employment concludes with Interlochen Center for the Arts, your account access will be removed for security purposes, even if you plan to return in the future.

I am currently using close to or over 200GB, what do I need to do?

It will be important to clean up and delete files so you are under 200GB. You will not be able to add any files to Google Drive if you are over 200GB. If you need lots of additional storage, we recommend purchasing an external hard drive which you can find in the Scholarshop or on any major retailer like Amazon or Best Buy.

Clean out those large, unused files from your Google Drive to help reduce your usage quickly.

• Visit Google Drive
• Click on the Storage Icon in the bottom left.
• This will show your largest files. If there are files here that you no longer need, drag them to the trash.
• Here is a short video demonstrating the process.

Will I be able to still send from interlochen.org email addresses or set up any kind of forwarding address?

After 18 months, you will no longer be able to send or receive email from @interlochen.org email addresses or set up any email forwarding. If you are still actively using your interlochen.org email address to contact people, we highly recommend sending those people an email with your updated personal email address.

If you like, you can also set up a vacation responder in Gmail to automatically reply to new email with your updated contact information.

What if I take a gap year and decide to return to Interlochen?

We are purposefully giving students 18 months for reasons such as this. If you come back as a student, your account will not be deleted, and the 18 months will start over when you graduate or leave.

Can I transfer data from my Interlochen account to a personal account?

Yes! Google does offer a service that allows you to transfer your email and Google Drive documents to a personal Google account. Need to sign up for a personal Google account? You can create one by following the instructions here. Please keep in mind that we are unable to support or help with a personal Google account in any way.

1. Transfer or download your Interlochen data that you wish to keep.
2. See FAQ items below for important considerations regarding transferring or downloading your data.

How can I transfer or download my Interlochen data?

1. Google makes it very easy to transfer your Interlochen email and Drive documents to a free personal Google account. See Google’s guide for detailed instructions. You can also export your Interlochen Google Calendars and Contacts and import them into your personal Google account.
   
   Note: this process will transfer all of your email and Google Drive documents, including trash and files shared with you. You want to check your storage in Google to determine whether you will need to purchase additional storage before the migration. (See below how to purchase more storage for a personal Google account.)
   
   It also can help to empty the trash for Google Drive and Gmail before the transfer.
   
   Finally, if you do not want to transfer all of your Google Drive Documents, see the Google Takeout option below, which allows you to pick which folders you would like to back up.
2. If you need more storage in your personal Google account, you can purchase additional Google storage beyond the free 15 GB provided with a free account.
3. You can also use Google Takeout to download all or selected portions of your Google Workspace data (Contacts, Calendar, Chat, etc.) to a local hard drive or a personal cloud storage service you may already be using, such as Dropbox or Microsoft OneDrive.
4. If you are using Google Photos with your Interlochen Google account, you can use Google Takeout to download a copy of your photos and re-upload them to a personal account, or follow the below steps.
   1. Follow Google's instructions to set up partner sharing, enabling partner sharing from your Interlochen account and selecting your personal Google account as your Interlochen account's partner.
   2. Approve the partner request from your personal Google account.
   3. From your personal Google account, follow Google's instructions in the "Save your partner's photos" expandable section to add the photos in your Interlochen account to your personal account.
   4. When the process has fully completed (this may take some time), delete the photos in your Interlochen account.

My Interlochen account still has access to a Shared Drive in Google Drive, will that data be deleted?

Shared Drives are owned by Interlochen, not by individual Interlochen user accounts. As a result, any Shared Drive you are a member of will not be deleted unless it is no longer needed by the institution. However, since your Interlochen account will be deleted after 18 months, you will lose access to those shared drives.

If you need to copy data out of the drives, you could:

• Download the files from the Shared Drive to your own local or personal storage.
• If you are a manager of the Shared Drive, you could add a personal Google account to the Shared Drive and copy the data directly to the personal Google account.

Shared Drives are only for institutional storage, i.e. data that supports the academic or administrative missions of Interlochen. As a result, if you have personal data in Shared Drives, we ask that it be moved to personal storage.

I have questions about this policy change that are not covered by this document. Where can I go for help?

If you have technical questions or questions about this policy change you can email wecanhelp@interlochen.org. Please keep in mind for privacy and security reasons, we will be unable to assist you with moving your personal data between accounts

If you wish to update your personal information please visit this page.