Moving Your AU Google Account Content

The email messages, files, and photos associated with your AU Account will no longer be available once your account is disabled. This article outlines simple steps for downloading files/photos or transferring content to a personal Google account.

Transfer Google Content Using Google Takeout

The Google Takeout tool allows you to download much of your personal AU Google account data as an export file to your own computer. You can select all of the options you desire and then choose the file format and method for retrieval. The Google Takeout process can take up to a week, depending on the amount of content involved.

  1. Go to gmail.com to log into your @anderson.edu Google account.
  2. Visit "Google Takeout" and the "Start the Transfer" option at https://takeout.google.com/transfer
  3. In the "Enter a destination account" area, enter your personal Gmail account. 
  4. Click "Send Code" to have a confirmation code sent to the Gmail account that you've entered.
Note: We recommend you check your personal Gmail account in an incognito window, different browser, or mobile device to get the confirmation code. Otherwise, Google Takeout may confuse which account is doing the transfer and give you an error.
  1. Check your personal Gmail account for the confirmation code and enter it in the blank on the Google Takeout page. Click Submit.
  2. Select what you want to copy and transfer.
  3. Click "Start Transfer."
  4. Follow the remaining onscreen or email instructions to complete the process and download the appropriate file(s) once they are ready.

Occasionally the Google Takeout process will send you a message that the process has failed. Unfortunately, ITS staff will not know what has caused the process to fail. We recommend trying the transfer process again but only selecting one type of content to transfer at a time (for example, only transfer email). You can come back and transfer other types after the first one has been successfully transferred.

Download Google Data to Your Computer

If you do not want to transfer your data to a different Google account, you may want to download your data.

  1. Visit gmail.com to log into your @anderson.edu Google account.
  2. Visit "Google Takeout" and the "Download or delete your data" option at https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout 
  3. On the "Create a New Export" form, select all the data to include in your download (e.g. Drive and Google Photos).
  4. Click "Next Step" to continue.
  5. Select: “Send download link via email” and “Export once.”
  6. Select the file format (e.g. .zip) and size (e.g. 2 GB increments).
  7. Click “Create export.”
  8. Follow the remaining onscreen or email instructions to complete the process and download the appropriate file(s) once they are ready.

Please refer to Google's support article for complete details and instructions, "Copy content from your school account to another account".

Once you have downloaded the relevant data to your computer, you may keep the files on your personal computer or upload the files to your personal third-party cloud storage service.

To learn how to extract data from a .zip file, refer to the following resources:

Download Shared Drives 

Shared Drives are different from the files stored in My Drive and shared. Instead of an individual owning a file, the drive itself is the file's owner. When a person is removed from a Shared Drive, the content remains for the other members of the Shared Drive. Because the content is connected to an individual, none of the items will be downloaded in the process listed above in Step 3. You must download any content from a Shared Drive that you want to save manually.

  1. Visit gmail.com to log into your @anderson.edu Google account.
  2. Go to Google Drive (drive.google.com).
  3. Locate and open the file that needs to be shared.

Please note: If you are a former university employee, please refrain from downloading files that are not strictly your own.

Print Article