Frequently Asked Questions - Alumni Email Service

Berkeley currently allows alumni to renew the active @berkeley.edu Google account they had as a former student, employee, or participant in a prior Alumni Email Service.  These accounts will be limited in July 2024 to only allow 5 GB of total storage (including all Gmail, Drive & Photos). More information about the limitations to the @berkeley.edu Google accounts provided to alumni can be found at Alumni Email Changes.

No. Campus is committed to maintaining ways for alumni to stay engaged with Berkeley. We will continue to evaluate whether this service is an effective way of achieving that goal. The Alumni Email Service is provided as a privilege and is subject to additional changes.

No. Email services for alumni are currently funded by UC Berkeley as a privilege and limited benefit to alumni. There are no charges to alumni for using the alumni email service. All UC Berkeley Google accounts provided to alumni will be limited to 5 GB of total storage.

Alumni can not purchase additional storage or use storage purchased directly from Google with their UC Berkeley Google accounts.

1. Former students are eligible to renew during your grace period
2. If you are an alum and also a recently separated employee, you can renew during your employee grace period

1. Enter the email address provided in the To: field of this message to login to Google
2. Enter your CalNet ID and Passphrase when presented with the CalNet Authentication Service page.
   1. The part before the @ symbol in the To: field of this message is your CalNet ID
   2. You can Reset Passphrase(link is external) if you can no longer remember it.
3. Check the Email(link is external) section of your Google profile to see all of your alternate email addresses.

This is a common error when you're already signed into a personal gmail account. Instead of logging out of your personal account, you can open an Incognito Window on Google Chrome or Private Window in Safari/Microsoft Edge/FireFox to access the form: https://sites.google.com/berkeley.edu/alumni-email/home

You should then be asked to login with a Google account in which you'll use your @berkeley.edu account (not @cal.berkeley.edu or any other alias). Then you should be prompted to authenticate with CalNet ID and passphrase to proceed to where you can submit your alumni email renewal form.

1. Control costs: Berkeley needs to manage the additional costs associated with the new storage pricing model offered to Google Workspace Education customers.

2. Manage risks and threats: Berkeley needs to manage the security and reputational risks and threats posed by unattended and possibly compromised alumni email accounts.

No. Only alumni with existing, active @berkeley.edu Google accounts are eligible to renew their service.

No. Only alumni with an active CalNet ID and passphrase can renew an @berkeley.edu Google account.

Many alumni value continued access to their berkeley.edu email address as a way to identify themselves as Berkeley graduates. Communicating between alumni and using it for job searches are two common ways alumni use their accounts.

Things to avoid:

1. Sending unsolicited email (SPAM) - even in relatively small numbers, sending SPAM can get your account blocked by Google.  If your account is blocked, your account will be reviewed for abuse and can be subject to restrictions or revocation.

2. Using as a login to other services - Signing up for and using your @berkeley.edu address for other consumer services should be avoided.  These include, but are not limited to, personal banking/financial accounts and personal subscriptions like Amazon or Netflix.

Please refer to the Alumni Email Service Level Agreement for the exhaustive list of alumni responsibilities including adherence to policies and prohibited conduct

Yes.  If you already have CalNet 2-Step verification using DUO, you will be required to continue using it.  Alumni who don’t yet have CalNet 2-Step will be contacted in late summer 2024 or early Fall 2024 with instructions on how to set up CalNet 2-Step.

Please review Leaving UC Berkeley to take the necessary steps to ensure you have retained any personal information you require and that you have properly transferred any data to others as appropriate.  If you take no action, your account will be disabled and eventually deleted.

If you have deleted thousands of email and it seems like your Google Storage usage is not coming down, this could be due to a few things:

• First, confirm that email is where the majority of your storage usage is being used. As you are logged into your Berkeley Google account, click https://drive.google.com/settings/storage to check how much storage is being used by your email vs. your Google Drive files. 
• When you delete thousands of emails at one time, Google will warn you that it may not delete them all at once and that it will be done in stages and may take longer. Sometimes we see this process fail and folks have to delete these emails more than once. Look for this message pop-up as you are deleting:

• You also need to empty your Trash. It may take several attempts to permanently delete the data in your Trash. Note that deleting a large number of data may cause an error. It is recommended to permanently delete your data in smaller batches if you have a significant number of them in your Trash. To permanently delete individual data from Trash, click trash from the sidebar and click the link Empty Trash Now:

• Once emptied, storage usage should decrease in about 24 hours. However, if you have deleted a significant amount of data, it may take two or more days for Google to accurately report your new storage usage.

Rarely, a connected app stores data in a “hidden” location within your Google Drive. You can check for these apps by visiting https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/settings . If you see anything that looks like it might be holding data you can use the dropdown “OPTIONS” menu on the right to “Delete hidden app data”. Make sure you don’t need the data before choosing this option. After doing so, you should see your storage decrease within a few hours.

Sometimes it can take up to 72 hours for Google to update your storage usage statistics. If it still hasn’t updated in a couple of days, please let us know and we will investigate.

Google can get confused when you’re logged into two accounts in the same browser profile. Try initiating the transfer using this URL instead - https://accounts.google.com/AccountChooser?continue=https%3A//takeout.go... which allows you to select your Berkeley account.

Unfortunately, if you are moving more than a small amount of data, it has a higher chance of failure. Since Google doesn't directly support Takeout Transfer, we recommend using VaultMe instead. It is guaranteed to work and has a dedicated support team. You can learn more about VaultMe here - https://www.vaultme.com/edu/ucberkeley  

If you want to try moving your content yourself, we recommend using Google Drive for Desktop. This video explains the process. Keep in mind that you will still need to download all native Google files (docs, sheets, slides, etc) manually via Google Drive in the browser so that they are converted to usable Microsoft Office documents. Native Google Drive files cannot be downloaded via Drive for Desktop.

This is a limitation imposed by Google, so we cannot change this setting. Instead, you need to use Google Takeout, Google Takeout Transfer, or vaultme.com to transfer your content to your personal account. You can also manually download your content and then upload it to your personal account.