Skip to main content

How to Migrate Your Student Mail to Your Alumni Account

These instructions are for moving student Google Mail. If you are unsure as to whether your @stanford.edu mail account is hosted in Google or Microsoft, open a browser and visit webmail.stanford.edu. Your email will display in either Microsoft Outlook or Stanford Google Mail.

Note:  GSB alumni have slightly different instructions than Stanford alumni, but the process is the same.

Forward your @stanford.edu mail

About four months after you graduate, Stanford automatically forwards your @stanford.edu mail to your alumni email address. The university keeps this forwarding in place for two years. Stanford also forwards mail for GSB alumni to their GSB alumni email addresses for two years.

Before you start migrating your mail, forward your @stanford.edu mail to your alumni email address so you only have to migrate your mail once.

  1. Go to Stanford Accounts.
  2. Click the Email Management tile, then click Forward email.
  3. Follow the onscreen instructions.
    We recommend that you select  DO NOT keep a copy stored in your @stanford.edu mailbox.

Migrate your @stanford.edu email using VaultMe

Stanford recommends that departing students use VaultMe to simply and quickly migrate their Stanford Student Account to their Stanford Alumni Account (or other personal email account). 

Note: Stanford Alumni Google Accounts have a maximum storage capacity of 15GB. If you plan to migrate your data to your alumni account, please ensure the data you’re migrating is under 15GB. As an alternative to your alumni account, you also have the option to migrate your student email/data to a different email account with sufficient storage space. If you have questions about student data usage, contact the Stanford University IT Helpdesk at (650) 725 -4357. If you have questions about your alumni email account, contact the Stanford Alumni Help Desk at (650) 724 -0627. 

How to Use VaultMe: 

  1. Visit VaultMe for Stanford to begin the process.
  2. Once on the VaultMe site, read the intro to understand how VaultMe’s online auto-migration works.
  3. In the section titled Migrate From, add the email service provider used for your student email account.
    • If you aren’t sure whether your stanford.edu mail account is hosted in Microsoft Outlook or Gmail, open a browser and visit webmail.stanford.edu. Your email will be displayed in either Microsoft Outlook or Stanford Google Mail. Click the Next button when finished.
  4. In the section titled Migrate To, add the email account you would like to migrate your student data to. (Note: If you are migrating your data to your alumni email account, select Google.) Click the Next button when finished.
  5. Click the Sign in with Microsoft/Google button to connect VaultMe to your @stanford.edu Student account. Click the Next button when finished.
  6. Click the Sign in with Microsoft/Google button to connect VaultMe to the email service provider you want to migrate your data to. Click the Next button when finished.
  7. Review your migration preferences and, if needed, select the boxes next to the types of data you want to migrate from your student account. While Stanford recommends you migrate all your data, the migration price depends on the amount of data you migrate.
  8. Continue through the checkout process and then pay to start the data migration. (You’ll receive a Stanford-negotiated discounted price.)
  9. Wait until the auto migration finishes. You will receive an email with a link to your migration report when the migration is completed. 

If you have any questions about your migration, you can reach VaultMe’s customer support team at support@vaultme.com. 

Manually migrate your @stanford.edu email 

If you prefer to migrate your Stanford student email/data manually, you must establish two concurrent connections: one for your @stanford.edu account and the other for your alumni account. 

 

Alumni account: Configure your desktop email client to your alumni account. Use the following instructions to configure the connection: 

Student account: Configure your desktop email client for a Microsoft 365 connection to your Stanford account. 

  • Student account email address: SUNetID@stanford.edu
     

Use the following instructions to configure the connection: 

 

Once you have set up your connections to your two email accounts, use your email client's Copy function to copy mail from your Stanford account to your alumni account. Using drag and drop to migrate your mail is not recommended. You could lose your mail if an interruption occurs. You may need to manually recreate your folders or labels if you use a mail client that is different from the ones referenced here. 

 

Tip: If you have a lot of mail to migrate, try copying it in blocks for a few months or a year at a time. Do a test block of a few months. Then, increase or decrease the size of the next blocks depending on how long the test block took to copy. 

IMPORTANT: Be sure to allow sufficient time for your mail migration to be completed. 

  • If you are using Apple Mail, click Window, then click Activity to ensure all messages have migrated.
  • If you are using Microsoft Outlook, click Send/Receive, then click Show Progress to ensure all messages have migrated. 

 

After you have completed the migration of your email from your Stanford account to your alumni account, close both connections and exit the mail client. 

More information

Last modified