Save Files Owned By Former Employees or Students

A knowledge base article about Save Files Owned By Former Employees or Students provided by the UC Berkeley IT Service Hub - Knowledge Portal

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Any file that is shared with you, even in a folder you own, is at risk of deletion when the owner leaves UC Berkeley, unless it is stored in a Shared Drive. Files stored in Shared Drives remain accessible to the group and are not affected by individual account changes.

A screenshot of a list of files, one of which shows a red box to the right of the file name. The red box says will be deleted.

Google Document titled "Critical Google Doc owned by an alumni who may not be renewing their account" marked "Alumni owned"

Saving Files

If you and/or your department/group will continue to need these files, you must take action to retain access before they are deleted.

  1. Find files at risk to view what needs to be saved. Review Find Files Marked “WILL BE DELETED” for instructions. 
  2. Review files and make a plan with your department/group about what should be saved and where files should be stored. Create a Shared Drive if you don’t already have one. 
  3. Move the files to keep them safe. Follow the steps in Move Files to a Shared Drive. 

Storing Research Data, Backups or Archives

If you have research data sets, backups, or archives, it may be best to move it outside of Google Drive entirely. View Data Storage Allocation for Faculty for more information on getting access to other storage options.

Recovering Lost or Deleted Files

If you have already lost access to institutional content that you need, we can recover the content if it was deleted in the past 25 days. Please complete a Google Content Recovery Request to get started.