New LionMail Quota Limits

In January 2022, Google announced the elimination of free, unlimited storage in Gmail, Drive, and Google Photos for its higher education clients. This will require storage limits to be placed on every active LionMail account. We aim to maintain service quality, minimize disruption, and contain costs while addressing immediate storage needs and planning for the future.

* If you are an Alum on LionMail as well as a member of another population, you will have the higher quota.

What do I need to do?

This will not impact many of you as you are already below the quota. You can check your current usage here. For those over quota, please try reducing your storage usage and consider these helpful clean-up tips for managing your storage. To save any current data elsewhere, please export any Google Drive data and Google Photos to another service before your quota goes into effect. 

  • Students & Alums: Sept. 1, 2024
  • Active Faculty, Active Staff, Emeriti, & Retirees: July 1, 2025

Please continue to check this page; we will update it with information and FAQs.

FAQs

You can check your current usage by going to the link below:

https://drive.google.com/settings/storage

For detailed information, navigate to your Google Drive -> Storage (located on the sidebar).

Not every file as you see in "My Drive" is part of your storage. Only files that you are the owner of are part of your storage. Files that are shared with you are not part of your storage but part of the storage for the owner (the person who shared it with you).

For more information on Google handles storage by going to the link below:

https://support.google.com/drive/answer/6374270?hl=en

 

After your effective date, if you are over quota:

  • You cannot upload new files or images to Google Drive.
  • You cannot create files in collaborative content creation applications like Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, or Forms. Until you reduce your storage usage, you cannot edit or copy affected files or submit forms.
  • You cannot back up any photos or videos to Google Photos.
  • You cannot record new meetings in Google Meet.
  • You cannot create assignments with new files, export grades to Google Sheets, or make copies of Assignments in Google Classroom.

The following services will still be available to you even if you have exceeded your storage quota:

  • You can still sign in.
  • You can still send and receive emails.
  • You can still view and download files stored in Google Drive.
  • You can still view and download photos stored in Google Photos.

After 3 months past your effective date, if you are still over quota:

  • Everything above still applies
  • Your LionMail account will be considered dormant and slated for deletion, even if you are still sending and receiving email.
  • CUIT will attempt to contact you to assist prior to your data (Drive & Photos) being permanently deleted.

For students and alums, there is no ability to increase your quota. We are investigating options for additional storage purchases through departmental chargeback for faculty and staff.

If you want to delete your LionMail account, please submit a ticket to the CUIT Service Desk.

When you first delete an email, file, or photo, it will be moved to the "Trash." Emails, files, and photos in the trash continue to count against your storage quota until permanently deleted. The Gmail, Drive, and Photos applications each have individual trash. While in your trash, items can be recovered within 30 days. Items in the trash are automatically and permanently deleted after 30 days. You can also choose to manually and permanently delete items in your trash at any time by navigating to the "Trash" folder and clicking either "Empty Trash" to remove all items or by selecting individual items and selecting "Delete Forever."

Email, files, and photos permanently deleted from trash are irrecoverable. This applies whether they were manually deleted from the trash or automatically deleted after the 30-day window. If you manually delete emails, files, or photos from the trash, please ensure you no longer need them.

If you delete, restore, or permanently delete many files or folders simultaneously, it may take several minutes for the changes to be processed.

An orphaned file is a file that lost its parent folder. This typically occurs when you share files/folders with others. Someone has a folder shared with you and/or other accounts, and you place a file into it. Then, someone deleted that shared folder, which puts the file/s in the orphaned status. You can check if you have orphaned files by following these steps:

  1. Go to Google Drive in your browser or open the Drive mobile app
  2. Plug the following string into the search bar: is:unorganized owner:me
  3. Run the search, and any orphaned files should show up.
  4. Right-click an orphaned file and select "Add to my drive" to restore them to your drive or "Remove" to send them to your trash.
  5. If you are deleting them to free up storage space, go to your trash folder, click the files, and select "Delete Forever" to completely remove them from your Drive and Google Storage.

Before deleting emails, files, and photos, you can download copies of emails, files, and photos. Once copies are stored on your local computer, external storage media, or another cloud storage account, you can delete the emails, files, or photos from your LionMail account to free up storage space. Google Takeout offers an easy way to obtain a copy of Gmail, Drive, and Photo data.

Email

Drive

Photos

  • Google Takeout
  • Download files from the web (https://photos.google.com/) to your local computer, external storage media, or another cloud storage account
  • Set up partner sharing to transfer Google Photos to a personal Google account. After setting up partner sharing, follow Google's instructions in the "Save your partner's photos" section to create a copy of photos in your account. Then, delete the photos from your columbia.edu account. Remember, you need to empty your Google Photos' trash in order to reclaim storage space used by deleted photos.

There is no storage quota for Google Groups and messages within its user interface. They do not count towards the University’s total pooled storage limit.

There is a grace period after graduation before you move from a student to an alum in LionMail. Your quota will be reduced to 5 GB when you become an alum. Your data will not be deleted immediately, but we strongly encourage you to save any data you want to keep before graduation, as your access to Google Drive and Google Photos will be restricted and your storage quota reduced.

Please see the tutorial on how best to use Google Takeout.

Unfortunately, CUIT does not have the ability to group people in LionMail by department for reporting purposes. It is the responsibility of the each individual to check their storage use and clean up if over quota. CUIT will be reaching out to anyone over quota ahead of the deadline to remind them to clean up their storage.

To find emails larger than 5 MB, you can search using the following criteria:

size:5m or larger:5m

To find emails sent over a year ago, you can search using the following criteria:

older_than:1y