Turning off W&M Gmail & Google Calendar

Summary

Information Technology will be turning off student access to W&M Gmail inboxes and Google Calendars this summer, which is one of the final steps in William & Mary’s transition to Microsoft Office 365. Faculty and staff access will be discontinued in the fall.

Full Description

Information Technology will be turning off access to student Gmail inboxes and Google Calendars this summer, which is one of the final steps in William & Mary’s transition to Microsoft Office 365. Faculty and staff inboxes and calendars will be turned off on October 29th.

What does this mean?

Following this change, you will no longer be able to access your university-issued Gmail inbox and Google Calendar. This includes current students who specially requested Gmail accounts prior to April 16, 2024.
Access to Google Workspace apps (Google Docs, Google Sheets, etc.) will not be impacted by this change. All your current content outside your Gmail inbox will remain accessible from your university Google account.
To access your Google account moving forward, you will use your @wm.edu email account and NOT @email.wm.edu account.
Forwards that you have set up from your @email.wm.edu account will no longer work once the inbox is turned off and any emails to those accounts will bounce. Any email communication to you should go to your W&M email address (username@wm.edu). We recommend creating an autoreply now, notifying senders that your Google mailbox is being retired and they should direct future communication to your @wm.edu email.
- Faculty/staff: You may want to specify that your autoreply is temporary, and once the account is shut off on October 29th the auto-reply will turn off and any emails sent to your @email.wm.edu account will automatically be forwarded to your @wm.edu account.

Notifications

Moving forward, you will use a recipient’s W&M email address (username@wm.edu) to share documents in Google Workspace.
Notifications will come to your Outlook email inbox.
If you try to access the document and get a prompt to log into Google, use your @wm.edu email address and you should get redirected to single-sign on.
You can access Google Workspace files by logging into my.wm.edu and clicking on the Google Workspace icon or directly at workspace.wm.edu.

Timeline

November 2021 - W&M IT announced the university would be transitioning from Gmail and Google Calendar to Microsoft Office 365.
January 2022 - Gmail accounts were copied over to O365.
December 2022 - The forward put in place from Gmail to Outlook was turned off.
August 2024 - Gmail and Google Calendar turned off for students.
October 2024 - Gmail and Google Calendar turned off for faculty and staff.

Helpful tips

Need to move content from Gmail to your Office 365 account? Follow the instructions on Microsoft's website. Note: You will need to use the desktop application for the classic version of Outlook to do this.
As a reminder, your W&M email serves as your primary email address for official university business. We strongly urge you to use a personal email address for personal things like resumes, bank accounts, streaming services and more. That way you won't have your email account tied to anything when you graduate.

Questions?

If you have any questions, please contact the Technology Support Center at support@wm.edu or (757) 221-HELP.