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The University is transitioning to Microsoft as the primary university-wide platform for collaboration and productivity tools, thereby reducing the reliance on Google services on campus. This change aims to provide a consistent experience, enhance security and privacy, and manage costs more effectively.
Knoxville-area Campus and Institutes to minimize Google services usage
Faculty and Staff: Use Microsoft Outlook for email and calendaring:
Migrations from Gmail to Outlook concluded in November 2025. All emails sent to your UT email address are now delivered to Outlook only. On your migration day, OIT copied messages and events saved in Gmail and Calendar to Outlook.
Changes to Google Drive: While Google Drive and Forms will remain available to faculty, staff, and students, OIT will significantly reduce the amount of available storage.
- If you or your group would like to move from Google Drive to Microsoft, OIT is here to help!
- For faculty and staff, OIT will assist in copying files from Google Drive to Microsoft 365 OneDrive.
- If your department requires assistance with transitioning to OneDrive, please contact us online, and our project team will contact you to discuss the timeline.
Frequently Asked Questions
When will I get access to the Microsoft services?
All faculty, staff, and students have access to Microsoft services. Go to https://office.com to get started. You can save files to your OneDrive, use the online web apps to create new documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, create Teams for collaboration, create Surveys to collect information, and more.
Will you move my email, calendar, and contacts?
- Faculty/Staff: Yes, if you use Gmail for your UT email account, OIT will migrate your email to Outlook.
- Students: Students are not currently required to move to Outlook; however, if you want to move from Gmail to Outlook, contact OIT online to get started.
Is there anything I need to know about the Gmail migration to Outlook?
During the migration, OIT will copy your email and calendar from Gmail to Outlook. Here are a few limitations to the migration:
Please note that you will see duplicate emails in Outlook due to differences between the two systems and how messages are routed. Unfortunately, this is expected and will need to be cleaned up manually.
| Data type |
Limitations |
| Mail |
Vacation settings, Automatic reply settings |
| Meeting rooms |
Room bookings won't be migrated |
| Calendar |
Shared calendars and event colors won't be migrated |
| Contacts |
A maximum of three email addresses per contact are migrated over |
| Contacts |
Gmail tags, contact URLs, and custom tags won't be |
Will you move my Google Drive files?
- Faculty and Staff: If you wish to migrate from Google to Microsoft, submit a request online.
- Students: If you wish to start using Microsoft instead of Google, you can use Google Takeout to export your Google Drive and import it into your UT OneDrive account.
Where can I learn more about Microsoft applications?
How will emails with multiple labels in Gmail be organized in Outlook?
The migration tool copied the message to each corresponding folder in Outlook
Will there be a folder for each combination of labels?
No. 1 Gmail label = 1 Outlook folder
Do labeled email threads containing multiple emails all appear grouped in the same folder in Outlook?
An Outlook folder was created for each label, and messages were copied to each corresponding folder.
Were email drafts copied?
Were my archived emails copied? Will they be in their own "archive" folder?
If a message does not have a label, it will not be migrated. Microsoft recommends assigning all important archived messages at least one label.