The Microsoft Outlook login page where students, faculty and staff can access their Ohio State emails. Credit: Lily Pace | Lantern Reporter
Students, faculty and staff can expect major changes coming to their BuckeyeMail and OneDrive storage accounts next semester.
Ohio State will discontinue “BuckeyeMail for Life” — a system that has allowed alumni to view and access their BuckeyeMail beyond graduation — beginning April 1 as well as mandate new storage limits in June 2025.
Automatic email account forwarding to third-party email services will end on Dec. 31, Beth Varcho, a spokesperson for the Office of Technology and Digital Innovation, said in an email. This feature is being changed due to a new university “cost structure” and to improve the security of email correspondence, she said.
Jason Pollock, director of Unified Communications at Ohio State, said this change will not only improve email efficiency from a business standpoint but will also increase BuckeyeMail’s overall reliability.
“The biggest service improvement is that by decreasing the number of messages we send, we are ensuring emails sent to people who want to receive communications from us will be delivered reliably,” Pollock said. “Eliminating forwarding and discontinuing older accounts will enable us to keep our email services secure.”
June 1, 2025 is when new storage limits will be enacted, reducing students’ and employees’ email and OneDrive storage, Varcho said. Most employees will have 100GB for each of their Outlook accounts, with archive storage and an additional 500GB of storage for their OneDrive. Students, on the other hand, will be granted 100GB of storage for their BuckeyeMail and 100GB of storage for their OneDrive.
Currently, faculty and students have 5TB of OneDrive storage per person, Varcho said. Outlook is limited to 100GB for faculty and students, and the Outlook email archive is limited to 100GB.
Varcho said most are already under the new limits. She said the current storage Ohio State is utilizing is 4.2 petabytes. In order to meet storage limitations, the university must use 2.2 petabytes or less. If they exceed the limit, Varcho said the university will have to pay Microsoft for additional storage.
“All of us can improve our habits in terms of adhering to retention schedules and become more [disciplined] about deleting messages that are no longer needed,” Pollock said.
Varcho said BuckeyeMail for Life will no longer be available as of April 1. According to the OTDI website, BuckeyeMail accounts will be accessible to future alumni up to 24 months after their graduation; once that time is up, however, the email and data associated with them will be deleted.
“These changes are necessary due to third-party email security updates and Microsoft’s pricing changes for email and storage services,” Varcho said.
Email services for current students will remain available for two years after their graduation, starting with the Class of May 2024, Pollock said.
Pollock said the decrease in storage, termination of automatic email forwarding and discontinuation of BuckeyeMail for Life will ultimately allow OTDI’s budget to expand into new territories that benefit students’ educational experiences.
This story was updated Tuesday, Dec. 3 at 12:26 p.m. to include information about the university’s current storage limits for OneDrive and Outlook.
