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Closing your SUNet ID Account: Faculty & Staff


CHANGE TO STAFF ONLINE ACCESS GRACE PERIOD

On October 23, 2012, the grace period for access to email and online services for staff was eliminated. Access to these systems now ends on the last day of employment. This change affects regular, temporary, and casual staff.

Overview

This page summarizes what happens to your email and other online services after you leave Stanford. You may have found your way here because you received notification that your SUNet ID account will soon close. This means different things depending on your current affiliation with the university (e.g., student, faculty, staff) and your current or expected future eligibility. This page helps you determine what "your account is closing" means to you, and what you need to do.

Depending upon your Stanford affiliation, your SUNet ID account services may change or end when you leave the university; see Account expiration and grace period, below.

Account expiration and grace period

Faculty When your affiliation with Stanford ends, your SUNet account enters a 120-day grace period which bridges you between the end of one academic year and the start of the next. If, at the end of this grace period, your affiliation has not been reactivated (i.e., you have left the university), your SUNet services end.
Staff

Effective October 23, 2012, access to @stanford email and other online services ends on the last day of your employment. This includes access to those Stanford business systems for which your SUNet ID served as login ID (e.g., Axess, Oracle Financials, PeopleSoft Student Administration). If you need copies of personal email or files, be sure to make them in advance.

Sponsored staff

If your SUNet account is sponsored (i.e., someone in the university has agreed to pay for you to use SUNet services for a fixed period of time) your sponsored services end when your sponsorship ends. You will receive email reminders 30 and 7 days before the expiration date of your sponsorship; use that time to either get your sponsorship renewed or to close your account.
Emeritus faculty and staff You receive ongoing, full-service SUNet ID accounts. No action is required.

What you should do

Transfer or forward your email

  • Forward your @stanford.edu email to another permanent email address (e.g., a Stanford Alumni, Yahoo!, or Hotmail account).
    1. Log into StanfordYou, and select Change settings for account.
    2. In the Forward email to another address section, click the Change link.
    3. Enter the email address(es) to which you want your @stanford.edu mail forwarded. Forwarding ends when your email service ends.

      Note: email forwarding for staff ends on the last day of employment. If you wish to extend your email forwarding you must petition your department to sponsor your SUNet ID for a longer period of time. Sponsorship is granted at the discretion of the department.
  • Set an autoreply message to inform senders of your new email address.
    1. Log into StanfordYou, and select Change settings for account.
    2. In the Vacation autoreply section, click the Change link.
    3. Set the autoreply status to ON, and write a message that includes your new email address. You do not need to set an expiration date, as the autoreply ends when your email service ends.

      Note: email forwarding and autoreply for staff ends on the last day of employment. If you wish to extend your autoreply message you must petition your department to sponsor your SUNet ID for a longer period of time. Sponsorship is granted at the discretion of the department.
  • Save your stored email
    • If you use POP, your email is saved on your computer. You should copy or forward any personal or other email to your own computer.
    • If you use IMAP, be sure that your emails and attachments are cached on your machine. To check this, set your email client to work offline and then make sure you can still get to all your email and attachments. If you can't see your messages and attachments offline, refer to your email program's documentation for how to change the caching setting.
    • If you use POP to your AFS space (mutt or alpine), your email is stored in the /Mail folder there. Use Stanford Desktop Tools to Mount Home Folder, then either use a desktop email client (e.g. mail.app or Outlook) to import the email from the /Mail folder, or just copy the files to your local computer's hard drive.
    • If you use Webmail, you will have to install a desktop client (e.g., mail.app or Outlook) and use POP to download all your email to your local computer's hard drive.

Move your files from your AFS space

Use Stanford Desktop Tools to Mount Home Folder, and copy needed files from your home folder to your computer hard drive. If you don't have Stanford Desktop Tools installed, use SFTP to transfer the files.

Close your website

If you've put a personal website at your www.stanford.edu/~sunetid address, you may want to use the grace period (if you have one) to redirect people to another website. You can do this just by placing a link to your new site on your Stanford site's home page, or by using this <head> tag:

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5;URL=www.mynewsite.com">

This will cause most browsers to automatically display the specified URL after a delay of 5 seconds (or any number of seconds you specify).

Your website files are stored in the /WWW folder of your AFS home folder. Use Stanford Desktop Tools to Mount Home Folder, and copy the files from your home folder to your hard drive. If you don't have Stanford Desktop Tools installed, use SFTP to transfer the files.

Note: web hosting for staff ends on the last day of employment. If you wish to keep your website you must petition your department to sponsor your SUNet ID for a longer period of time. Sponsorship is granted at the discretion of the department.

If you have any questions, submit a HelpSU request.

Last modified October 23, 2012