Leaving SPPS:  Managing Ownership of Your SPPS Apps Contacts and Documents

Saint Paul Public Schools provides SPPS Apps accounts for current students and employees. As soon as a student or employee identification number is no longer active, the SPPS Apps account tied to that identification number is suspended.  Suspended accounts will be deleted on an annual basis.  Once an account is deleted, all of the documents created by that account are deleted, and cannot be retrieved.  SPPS students and employees are encouraged to export their contacts and any documents they want to take with them before they leave the district.  The SPPS Technology Services Department provides links to resources to assist SPPS students and employees with the process of transferring file ownership, and the process for exporting their contacts and documents.

Transfer Document Ownership

Some documents created by SPPS students and employees may contain vital information for a school, program, club, or organization, and these documents need to be saved. For example, the current student council president is graduating and has a folder containing all of the planning documents for the homecoming dance.  Once that person graduates and their account is deleted, no one (including the people it was originally shared with) will be able to access the folder.  In this instance, where the materials need to stay within a group, it is best to transfer document ownership.  Since SPPS Apps is part of Google Apps for Education, document ownership transfers can only occur within the SPPS domain of @stpaul.k12.mn.us .  Use the link below to learn how to transfer file ownership within SPPS Apps.

Transfer Document Ownership within SPPS Apps

Managing Your SPPS Apps Contacts

Export your Contacts as a CSV File - This process will allow you to export your contacts and import them into a personal Gmail account or another email account that supports uploading of contacts. A CSV file can be opened by Excel or other spreadsheet applications, and you may edit these contacts to fit the format needed for other email applications. 

Export Contacts

Import Your Contacts into a Personal Gmail Account - These directions will show you how to take the CSV file you exported in the previous step, and import them into a personal Gmail account.

Import Contacts to a Personal Gmail Account

Transfer Documents from SPPS Apps

In Saint Paul Public Schools, we want students to be able to take their work with them when they leave the district.  Since Google does not support the transfer of ownership across domains, which would allow SPPS Apps users to easily transfer their documents to a personal Gmail account, the SPPS Technology Services Department provides Apps users with links to directions and resources for exporting their documents.

To avoid any unnecessary data charges on a cell phone or mobile device, the Technology Services Dept. recommends that you complete this process on a computer. Be aware that the export process will download files to a computer, so be sure to carefully delete all files from the computer, empty the Trash / Recycle Bin, and log out completely when you are finished.

Manual Transfer -- Download Docs and Upload to a Personal Account

The document linked below provides step-by-step directions to export your SPPS Apps documents in common file formats. This creates a .zip file that can be saved on a computer or uploaded to a personal Gmail account.  It is important to note that document sharing settings are not preserved through this process.

Transferring Files from SPPS Apps

If you have documents in a personal Gmail account and want to transfer them to an SPPS Apps account, follow the directions in the link below

Download Documents from a Personal Gmail/Docs Account and Upload to an SPPS Apps Account

Google Takeout

The Data Liberation Front, created by a group of Google engineers and supported by Google, provides a tool to "liberate" all of your documents in Google Docs.  This process requires users to download and install the Google Takeout application on their computer.  This process has not been tested by SPPS Technology Services, and the Technology Services Department does not provide technical support for this application.

http://dataliberation.org