Students given two week Google extension to save lost work

By Patrick Sullivan, Co-Editor-in-Chief

20,000 Google accounts were disabled on 14 October as part of the migration to Microsoft services, and students have lost access to data unless they securely moved the files.

After a long transition period moving from Google to Microsoft IT services, beginning at the start of the 2018/19 academic year, the University of Bristol finally disabled 20,000 Google accounts for taught students. This excludes former students who have now graduated and also currently active students whose studies finish later in 2019.

Digital Bristol, the department implementing the system changes, sent out multiple emails advising students to protect their work and ran several events, the last of which was on 2 October.

Despite their efforts, many students have still lost access to work when accounts were finally disabled on 14 October. To allow those affected an extra chance to retrieve important data, the University are granting two weeks temporary access to their Google account.

The IT service desk are also asking why students were unable to move their data before the ‘cutoff point’ before reinstating their Google accounts for the period.

Quote from student:

A spokesperson from Digital Bristol said: ‘Google accounts for over 20,000 students were closed last Monday as advertised for the last year. Only about 100, about 0.5 per cent of the students have requested that their accounts be temporarily reactivated. This was offered in case students had missed the deadline to save their work before their Google accounts were closed.’

Featured Image: Unsplash / Elle Cartier

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