Google Workspace storage for inactive accounts

Inactive accounts are accounts owned by former employees or students no longer employed at TMU or owned by former students who have completed their studies and have not opted into the Alumni Gmail for Life program.

As per the university’s Record Retention Schedule (RRS), files owned by former employees or student staff are retained for three years following their departure from the university. Files owned by former students are retained for one year following their graduation. After these periods, files owned by inactive accounts will have their files deleted and removed from Google Workspace.

Employee and student staff accounts that have been inactive for over three years will have their files deleted and removed according to the deletion schedule outlined in the following section. Student accounts that have been inactive for more than one year will have their files deleted and removed based on the deletion schedule in the subsequent section. Moving forward, as employee and student accounts become inactive, they will be deleted three years after the date they become inactive for employees and one year for students.

On a rolling basis, CCS will begin to delete inactive student accounts and the files they own in July, with inactive employee accounts and their files scheduled for deletion beginning in August. CCS will begin this process with accounts that have been inactive for the longest period of time, with accounts inactive prior to 2016 deleted first.

Over the month of June, CCS will be applying the following red label to files in Google Drive owned by inactive accounts:

Please note that when previewing a non-Google file type like a PDF, image or video owned by an inactive account in Google Drive, the red label will automatically appear. However, if you download a non-Google file or open it in another application like Adobe Acrobat or Microsoft Office, the red label will not be displayed.

When accessing a file owned by an inactive account, you will also see a warning banner (below) at the top of the file informing you that you are unable to modify the file. If you need to retain access to an inactive file, employees will need to complete the request access to Gmail, Voicemail, Google Drive file ownership transfer form available on the IT Help portal and request that the file is transferred to yourself or another member of your team. All file ownership transfer requests are subject to approval by your department’s Vice President.

Yes, employees can search for Google Workspace files owned by inactive accounts that have been shared with them. To do so:

1. Open Google Drive and select the Advanced search button to the right of the search field
2. In the Labels search field, type TMU system label
3. A dropdown menu will appear. Select TMU system label
4. Two additional dropdown menus will appear. In the second new dropdown menu, select To be deleted (file owner is inactive) and select Search
5. You will be directed to a new screen populated with all files owned by inactive accounts shared with you

Yes. To search for files owned by a specific inactive account:

1. Open Google Drive in your web browser
2. Select the Show search options button to the right of the search bar at the top of your screen
3. Select the Owner drop down menu and select Specific person
4. Enter the former student or employee’s email address* and select Search
5. A list of all files owned by the past employee will automatically populate

*Searching for an inactive account’s “@torontomu.ca” or “@ryerson.ca” email address will show the same results.

• If you have the appropriate file permissions, make a copy of the file, save it to your personal TMU or departmental Google Drive and share with collaborators as required.
• If you are unable to make a copy or access a file, employees can use the request access to Gmail, Voicemail, Google Drive file ownership transfer form available on the IT Help portal to request a transfer of ownership. All file ownership transfer requests are subject to approval by your department’s Vice President.

Files owned by former employees are considered to be owned by an inactive account. As an employee prepares to leave the university, they should be asked to transfer ownership of key files and folders to their supervisor or another member of their team. 

In the event an employee has already left the university, supervisors can submit a request to change the owner of their files, subject to approval by your department’s Vice President.

If a file is owned by a former employee

• We recommend making a copy of the file, re-sharing it with key contacts as required and deleting the original file so the file is no longer owned by an inactive account.
• If you are unable to access a file, use the request access to Gmail, Voicemail, Google Drive file ownership transfer form available on the IT Help portal to request a transfer of ownership. All file ownership transfer requests are subject to approval by your department’s Vice President. 

We recommend always saving team or departmental files and data to a Google shared drive. Contents of shared drives are owned by TMU and can be accessed after an account becomes inactive.

As Google shared drives will be limited to 1 TB or storage, we also suggest organizing shared drives by team or project, rather than creating one large shared drive encompassing an entire department. Large departmental shared drives often require nesting multiple folders within them, which can be difficult to navigate.

If your department is using managed departmental folders with a deptfolder ownership account, you may request a consultation with CCS to explore moving your departmental folders over to shared drives by completing the IT Help Request Form in the IT Help portal. 

Benefits of moving your departmental folders to a shared drive include additional features unavailable to managed department folders like: 

• Access to full Google support via the CCS team
• Increased ease of managing shared drive access
• Increased permission roles for shared drive members for the management of content
• Prevention of the unintentional deletion of files or data, as only those with a designated manager role for the shared drive can permanently delete files

By moving a managed departmental folder to a shared drive, all files from the departmental folder will now be owned by TMU, rather than the original file creator. This is beneficial to departments as it will help prevent instances where files become inactive once an employee or student staff member leaves the university.

Please note that CCS is unable to move files from a managed departmental folder to a shared drive if the files are owned by accounts external to the university.