Secure Your Data Before Leaving UC Berkeley

Audience

• Employees leaving UC Berkeley who need to transfer or move files and information before their account is disabled. 

 

⚠️Before you leave UC Berkeley, it is your responsibility to prevent the loss of important institutional data. Follow the steps below to prepare your account and leave your department in good standing:

1. Prepare your account for departure when your grace period ends.
2. Preserve university-owned data by transferring ownership and moving files.
3. Save your personal information to alternate locations.

1. Prepare Your Account

Once your CalNet grace period ends, your @berkeley.edu account will be canceled* and you will not be able to access email or Google Drive data.

1. Set an automatic responder on your email account alerting people of your departure, providing an alternative way to reach you or a departmental contact if desired.
2. Review any personal subscriptions or services that use your @berkeley.edu email address and update them to a personal email address, if appropriate.
3. Save contact information for colleagues that you may wish to maintain relationships with after leaving Berkeley.

*The following exceptions apply to departing employees:

• Eligible alumni will have access to the Alumni Email Service.
• Retirees can register for the Retiree email service to retain their @berkeley.edu account. 
• Emeriti will retain their email accounts. 

2. Preserve University-Owned Data

1. Transfer Google Group ownership. Visit the Manage Lists page to determine whether you need to delete or transfer ownership of mailing lists that you own. Consider transferring ownership to a SPA rather than to an individual. 
2. Transfer files owned by you within Box to a SPA or other individual at UC Berkeley to preserve retention of content. Read more about transferring folder ownership. 
3. Transfer files owned by you within Google Drive: Move Files to a Shared Drive. 

3. Save Your Personal Information

Move any personal content you want to keep, but that is not needed by campus to a personal storage location such as a personal Gmail account or external hard drive. 

• Download individual files to your computer. 
• Bulk download files with Google Takeout (recommended for exports under 50 GB).
• Bulk transfer files between Google accounts with Google Transfer (recommended for transfers under 50 GB).
• Migrate your Google account with VaultMe (UC Berkeley discount available).

For Supervisors

If you need to access data from departing or former employee accounts, please review the UC Berkeley Office of Ethics website for detailed information regarding accessing former employee email or files.