As a Queen's alumni or retiree, you retain access to your Queen's-provisioned email and calendar. Take a read through our guide below as you prepare to leave Queen's.
To learn more about when your other Queen's services will be deprovisioned, please consult the Service Termination Timelines page.
Before You Leave Queen's
Alumni and retirees are eligible for "Email for Life," allowing them to retain access to their Queen's email through Outlook on the web. This access is contingent upon maintaining a current password as per Queen's Authentication and Access Control Standard.
If you wish to continue using Microsoft 365 services on your personal device(s), you have several options:
- You can access your Queen’s email using at no cost
- You can or (yearly or monthly) directly from Microsoft. This would provide a license for Office desktop applications such as Outlook, PowerPoint, and Excel, as well as secure cloud storage. Refer to the chart below for a comparison of services.
IMPORTANT WARNING: Do not use your queensu.ca email address as your username for your personal Microsoft account. Create a new personal Microsoft account with an outlook.com email address to manage your Microsoft account and to make purchases.
Summary of Microsoft 365 applications and services*
| Queen's Microsoft 365 offerings | Microsoft's Microsoft 365 offerings | |
| Active students, staff and faculty | Alum, Retired staff and faculty | Free | Basic | Personal | Family |
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| * The information in this table is subject to change and is provided for comparison purposes only. Please refer to for specific details on eligibility and availability and for the most up-to-date information on Microsoft free, basic, and personal/family subscriptions. | ||
When you leave Queen's, you will no longer be able to access the Teams, Outlook groups, or Viva Engage Communities that you created. To ensure that your colleagues can continue to work after you've left, take a moment to transfer ownership.
Once you transition from an active student or faculty/staff member to alumni or retired faculty/staff, you will no longer have access to your OneDrive, OneNote, Teams, or other Queen's-based cloud services, except for email. Your OneDrive for Business site will be permanently deleted within 30 days of this transition. To retain any documents or data for personal use, please download and back them up on a private drive or cloud location.
Before you start downloading content, ensure you have enough storage space on your local device. Microsoft offers free personal accounts with 5 GB of storage and a subscription service with up to 6 TB of storage. Refer to
Downloading content stored in OneDrive and Teams
- For instructions on downloading your OneDrive content to your personal computer, refer to and/or .
- Review the for the an optimal downloading experience. For large volumes of data, it might be useful to download in smaller batches to avoid interruptions.
Important Note on OneNote Notebooks
You cannot download OneNote notebooks directly. If you attempt to download a folder that contains a OneNote notebook, the .zip file will contain an error message in the form of a .txt file. To download a copy of your OneNote notebooks:
- Refer to Microsoft's articles: and for detailed instructions on how to download a copy of your OneNote notebooks as a backup or to upload its contents to another account.
If you’re running a supported version of Windows, you’re probably already set. The latest versions of Windows have pre-installed.
If you have an older version of Windows or a Mac, you should investigate the best antivirus solution for your operating system. Check out the for more information about antivirus and your system.
Phishing emails attempt to defraud users of their personal information. View tips on .
you can take in response to suspicious emails. IT Services strongly recommends reporting phishing, spam, and abusive emails.
NetID
During your time at Queen's, you were assigned a – a unique network identification that allows you to access many of Queen's online services. Your NetID and associated password will continue to be the credentials required to access Queen's services.
You will retain access to your Queen's-provisioned email provided that you update your NetID password on a yearly basis.
You can manage your NetID and password using . Note that Queen’s will never ask you for your NetID and password via email or phone.
It is important to never share your NetID and password with anyone.
Email Access
Retirees and alumni retain access to their Queen's email account in Microsoft 365.
Retirees and alumni can access their Queen's email by signing in from the web and logging in (with NetID and password) at least once per year. Further information for retirees is available on the Retirees Association of Queen's website. Further information for alumni is available on the Alumni Relations site under Email for Alumni Service.