Shared Files To Be Deleted

Swarthmore was able to save files from users who were no longer with the college because Google allowed us to have unlimited Drive space. Google no longer provides unlimited space, so we must now delete old files from users who are no longer at the college. All of the accounts scheduled to be deleted in this initial round have been disabled for more than 1 year or have never been logged into.

The “To Be Deleted” Label

For users scheduled to be deleted, a red label reading To Be Deleted will be added to their files. If you have had files shared with you by a user who is scheduled to be deleted, you will see this tag next to the document name at the top of your documents.

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Screenshot showing the To Be Deleted label.

If you are not sure if you have access to any files scheduled to be deleted, you can use this link to do a Google Drive search for files scheduled to be deleted. This link will open your Drive in a new tab and filter it to show you files shared with you that are scheduled to be deleted. Please review these files for anything important that you may need to keep access to.

How to Keep Access to Important Files

If you have important files that you need to keep access to there are a couple of ways you can save them. For more information and additional options you can review, check out our article on saving work that has been shared with you via Google Drive.

Make a Copy of the Files

If you use the link above to search for files that are scheduled to be deleted, Drive will open in a new tab with a list of items shared with you that include the To Be Deleted label. If you see a file on this list that you need to save you can right-click on the file and choose Make a copy from the list of options that appear. An information pop-up will appear at the bottom-left of your screen letting you know the copy was created and it provides a link taking you to the file location it was saved to.

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Screenshot of the information pop-up.

Add the Files to a Shared Drive

Shared Drives are used when groups of people need to have a shared file repository to keep files that they do not want to be removed when an individual leaves the college. This can be great for departmental files, ongoing committees, student groups, shared research, etc. Files stored in a Shared Drive are owned by the college, not an individual, so when a user leaves the college all files they created in or added to a Shared Drive will remain. You can add files you want to save to a Shared Drive to protect them from this deletion process.

Check out our article on Shared Drives for more information. You can also request a Shared Drive (login required) through our support portal.