If your Office 365 account is closing because of graduation, retirement or leaving the university, there are steps you can do to take your OneDrive and/or Home Drive (H:) data with you.

  1. There are many personal options for saving files to the cloud (e.g. personal OneDrive, Dropbox, etc.).  Sign-up for an account prior to leaving.
  2. Download your data and upload the data to whatever service you have chosen to sign-up for. 
  3. An alternative way is to use a sync client to copy and paste files between Office 365 and the personal service you have chosen.
  4. A 3rd alternative is to use a USB key or device to save your data to.
  5. If you have shared any files or folders out of your OneDrive, you need to do the following:
    1. Stop the sharing.
    2. Download the file and give it to the new owner.
    3. The new owner of the file can re-issue sharing.
    4. Shared files and folders will continue to work for 90 days, but once the data is archived, the files will be deleted by Microsoft.
  6. If you have files that need to stay with your department or unit, talk to your supervisor about where these files should go.  In most cases, a SharePoint site should be setup to handle shared departmental data.
  7. When do I lose access to my files?
    1. Faculty and Staff lose access to OneDrive on your last day of employment.
    2. Retirees lose access to OneDrive on your last day of employment.
    3. Students have access for 2 years following graduation or leaving the University.
Article number: 
121191
Last updated: 
March 23, 2023
Category: