Information for Alumni

• Alumni will retain a @vt.edu address. Alumni will keep their existing vt.edu email address. It will not change.

• Only mailbox service: Alumni only receive a 5 GB Gmail mailbox — no calendar — and no other Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 services. 
• Moving files: Alumni with items in their Google storage are responsible for moving those files. Guidance is available, but the responsibility is the alum’s.  

• Timeline: Please see the timeline for important dates and deadlines. The 5 GB storage limit took effect Jan. 16, 2024. Access to Google Photos ended Jan. 16, 2024. Except for Gmail, all other services for alumni were turned off on March 15, 2024. 
• Deadline: Google storage for alumni, except Gmail, has been disabled as of March 15, 2024. Alumni should have taken steps to remove all data from their Google storage (i.e., My Drive) prior to this date. 
• After March 15, alumni mailboxes that still exceed 5 GB may experience restrictions. Please ensure your email storage remains within this limit.

• Review your Virginia Tech Google account storage. Visit this link to check your storage. Your total storage must be under 5 GB to ensure your Gmail functions without restrictions. Drive data will be deleted by the university. Photos data can no longer be removed from Virginia Tech Google accounts.
• Export from Google Photos: While the Google Photos app has been turned off for Virginia Tech accounts, you can still export photos using Google Takeout. This will not delete the data from your Google account; it will only provide you a copy of your photos.

• You can find support resources and tutorials on this website. Please see the FAQs page for detailed questions and answers about these service changes.
• You may also contact 4Help for individual assistance.

If you graduated in May 2023 or December 2023, your email and calendar have been moved to Exchange Online. This change is temporary. At Virginia Tech, recent graduates are still recognized as students in university systems for several months, while a number of steps occur in the background to move your status from ‘student’ to ‘recent student’ and then to ‘alumni.’ 2023 graduates are in a unique position of being moved to Exchange Online for a period. This also means that 2023 graduates will retain their student Google storage for a longer period than anticipated. 

To access your Virginia Tech email, log in to my.office365.vt.edu, or see this 4Help article for help accessing your Exchange Online account.

Eventually, when your affiliation with the university changes to “alumni,” your Virginia Tech email service will move back to Gmail, and you will lose access to calendar service, in accordance with alumni service changes. Note that when this occurs, your old emails will not be migrated into your new Gmail account, so you may want to save emails that are important to you.

We recommend that you start planning for alumni service changes now: move any files you want to retain out of your Virginia Tech Google Drive to a different service, and find a different calendar service if you currently rely on your Virginia Tech-provided calendar. 

The following article further explains changes to Google and Microsoft services when transitioning from a student to an alum:

• Understanding Virginia Tech Google Workspace and Virginia Tech Microsoft 365 Service Eligibility