Graduating Seniors' E-mail

ITS will close your access to file services on the Courses and Departments file shares, personal www webpages and authoring access to Word Press effective June 1. If these files are important to you, then you should save them elsewhere before this date. Please consult with the ITS Support Center (207-859-4222) if you need help with saving webpages or other files.

ITS deletes all graduated seniors’ accounts on August 31 following graduation. At account deletion time, your Colby computer account and password will cease to function. All of your e-mail messages will be removed from Colby computers. If these e-mails are important to you, then you should save them elsewhere before this date.

If you do nothing, what will happen?

Your e-mail address will no longer work effective August 31—if you do not set a redirect you will become “user unknown” in the world of e-mail once your account is deleted. Any e-mail sent to your @colby.edu e-mail address will bounce back to the sender with a request “user unknown” message.

You can prevent the trauma of “user unknown” by simply setting an e-mail redirect at Colby before your account closes. An e-mail redirect returns a nice message back to the sender, informing them that your Colby e-mail account is no longer in service but that you can be reached at another e-mail address (which you provide). Here are the steps needed to set up an e-mail redirect:

1. Obtain an e-mail account elsewhere. You may already have one at Outlook, Yahoo or Gmail. You may have a new e-mail account at your workplace or graduate school. Make sure this e-mail account works before proceeding. If you don’t know how to do this, please consult with the ITS Support Center(207-859-4222).
2. Transfer your Colby e-mail and Drive documents to another Gmail account using https://takeout.google.com/transfer.
3. Click here to set a redirect before August 31—you may have to authenticate with your Colby password. Check the “redirect” button and enter your new e-mail address (i.e. Jane.Doe@gmail.com). The redirect will take effect on Aug. 31 and will stay in place for approximately six months. For this reason, simply say “graduated.” You will receive a confirmation e-mail from the e-mail administrator within a day or so, indicating that your request was received.
   • By updating your contact information, you consent to receiving communications from Colby, including alumni updates, reunion and event invitations, and fundraising via direct mail, email, phone, and/or text messaging.
4. Test the redirect following your chosen start date by sending an e-mail to your Colby address from an external e-mail address.
5. Change any social media accounts, banking, job searches, etc that are linked to this e-mail address.  Did you use your Colby e-mail as the recovery account for lost passwords?
6. If you’ve created Google Drive documents and shared them with faculty members or others you will need to change ownership.
7. Download your documents, YouTube Videos, etc.  Google Takeout lets you download all of your documents in one pass. Here is the link you need  https://google.com/takeout

What will happen after the redirect on your Colby e-mail server starts?         

E-mail sent to your Colby address will bounce back to the sender. The body of the returned message will say “User has moved; please try <jadoe@gmail.com>”, where the address in brackets is what you entered in step 2. The sender will have to note your new e-mail address and resend the message. While the bounced message may be a pain for the sender, they will learn that you have moved and what your new e-mail address is.

Why does Colby use redirects versus forwarding your mail?

Click here for more information on why Colby will only accept a request for a redirect rather than forwarding your e-mail

What about your Google Drive documents?

Once your email account is gone, so are your Google Drive documents.  If you’ve created documents for staff or faculty members on Google Drive and shared them you will need to change ownership. If you want to keep your Google Drive documents use Google Takeout https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout to download all of your documents.