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Graduating? Retiring? What it means to leave PPS and Google

It's the end of yet another school year...

So many happy moments! Our seniors are graduating. Our retirees, who have given us so much, are preparing to leave. Each person leaving Portage Public Schools is stepping into a new adventure.

For many of you who will depart from our ranks, it will be important that you are able to take with you some, or all, of the products you have created. Most of these items live in the Google-sphere and you need to know how to pack 'em up and ship 'em out.

So... today's post is about How to Take Your Files Stored in Google With You When You Leave.

Quickly, let's mention your U Drive files. Simply grab a flash drive or log into your favorite cloud storage service and drag-n-drop or upload those files. Done.

DISTRICT EMPLOYEES: Make sure you work with your supervisor to transfer ownership of any files critical to the success of your team. See how to transfer ownership in this article.

With Google, there are three ways to transfer content to another Google account.

  • Share and Copy (My Drive, a few files at a time)
  • Direct Transfer (Gmail and My Drive)
  • Download Your Data (take it all, recommended minimum)*

* Note you can only take files of which you are the owner.


Share and Copy

If you happen to be old enough to own (13+), and have created, a personal Gmail account, you may share those files you wish to keep with that account and make copies of those files from within the personal account. By making a copy of those files in Google Drive, your personal account will then become the owner of those copies. The instructions below will tell you how to share and make copies of your files.
  • How to Share (with another account)
  • How to copy a file
    • Locate the file in Google Drive
    • Select the file
    • Right-click and “Make a copy”
    • You now own the copy

Note you may share an entire folder and make copies of multiple files with that folder at one time; however, you cannot make copies of folders.


Direct Transfer

An easier way to copy your files from your School Google account to another Google account is by using Google's Transfer Service. Google's Support Document details what you can copy and how to use the service. 

This service will transfer gmail (not contacts, chats, or tasks) and Google Drive files you own (not Google Photos stored in Drive). Files shared with you can be copied to your new account but must be added to your My Drive first and will not affect the owners of those files.
  1. Make sure you have created (or have access to) another Google account
  2. Go to Transfer your content
  3. Follow the instructions on the Transfer page
Gmail messages are added to a label in Gmail stating the account name and transfer date. Drive files are placed into a folder named similarly.

Note that in order to transfer selected files, you must have enough storage space available in your new account to store transferred files. A personal Gmail account only has 15GB of storage. This amount of space is sufficient for most users. However, you may need to be selective.


Download Your Data (Recommended Minimum)

Google offers a service for G Suite for Education users that allows users to download an archive of all owned files and data. This service, once called Google Takeout, allows you to export all or any portion of your Google Apps Services (files, emails, videos, etc.) to a compressed file. This compressed file, typically a .Zip file, can then be uploaded to another online cloud storage service or saved onto a USB flash storage device (flash drive, usb stick, etc.).

Read the Google Support on how to Download Your Data.

A couple of helpful tips!

1) Services with an arrow next to the selection slider at the right, will allow you to choose how you would like your data downloaded. As with Contacts in the image below, you might wish to choose a CSV file, so that you could easily import your contacts into a spreadsheet.
2) Once you have selected your desired services and clicked next, one of the options available to you is the Delivery Method. The default is a link in your email, but since you are leaving a Google environment, maybe you might choose a direct download to Dropbox instead.


Note that depending on how much information you are exporting the zip file could be quite large and could be split into multiple zip files.) Additionally, all Google files are converted to their Microsoft Office equivalent (i.e. Docs = Word, Slides = PowerPoint, Sheets = Excel, etc.)



Thank you for your time with Portage Public Schools!





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