This article gives students instructions about their university IT account whether they are leaving the university or becoming staff.

Students needing something specific not listed within the article can contact their Faculty Student Offices.

If you are not expecting your IT account to close as you are still studying, please contact your School Office in the first instance.

What happens after becoming an Alumni

From September 2025, after further consultation we are now offering by default a new alumni email account service to every student who graduated or left after 01/01/2025, this will be for one year.  After that, you will be offered the chance to opt – in again to September 2027. This is part of a 2-year pilot scheme.  

If you would like any further information about this change, please visit our Frequent Asked Questions (FAQs)

Files and university systems

You typically get 5 months before your account changes to give you a chance to transfer any data you want to keep.

You will receive a warning email 28 days before your account is due to expire.

You will lose access to your files when your account expires, and these files will be permanently deleted shortly after this.

You will lose access to the following university systems and the files stored there:

• Personal Filestore
• OneDrive and any Office 365 services
• Banner
• SUSSED
• The University Virtual Private Network (VPN)
• Eduroam
• Public Workstations
• Blackboard
• eAssignments
• Efolio
• PGR Manager
• GitHub
• Most other services that require you to authenticate

Extensions to a computing account

Students cannot request extensions to their computing account. However, if you feel you have a strong case for an extension, please raise a request to ServiceLine.

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Graduated students leaving the university

Overview

If you are leaving the University after 01/01/2025 you will now be entitled to an alumni email address for an additional year. This includes all students who have a completed a minimum of a semester of a credit bearing account.

Once you receive your final results, the Student Office marks you as "Qualified", and you retain access to your full student computing account for approximately 5 months.

You will receive a Welcome email from the Office of Development and Alumni Relations (ODAR) - this could be in September or January. This will be the start of your 1-year ongoing email access. For example, Students who qualify between 01/01/2025 and 31/07/2025 will receive the Welcome email in September 25. They will continue to have full access to their computing account to November, when they will then transition to an alumni email address until September 2026.

Description of the process

You will continue to get approximately 5 months of access to your full computing account (xxx@soton.ac.uk) before receiving a warning email giving you 28 days to remove (offboard) the contents of your student account (for example, any files and data that you want to keep from your OneDrive account). 

This email will also explain that your student account will transition to an alumni email address. As part of this transition, you will see your primary email alias change from @soton.ac.uk to @southamptonalumni.ac.uk, however emails will continue be received from both addresses. Outbound emails will show as being sent from @southamptonalumni.ac.uk.

Please note, that all accounts must have Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) enabled. If you have MFA turned on as a student, your MFA settings stay the same. If you need help, please see the article ‘How to set up and manage Microsoft Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)’.

Your alumni account will be an email only account - there will be no access to other University systems and services.

Process recap

Alternative description of the picture above

From the left to the right:

1. Your student status changes to Graduated / Leaver
2. Your full computing access remains in place for an additional 152 days (“152-day Rule”)
3. 28 days before the day of the transition, you receive a warning email informing you that your IT account will change to an Alumni account
4. Your student (and primary) email address changes from @soton.ac.uk to @southamptonalumni.ac.uk.
   Your account converts to an Alumni account. You will be able to access your alumni email account, but you will not be able to access any other university systems
5. You will continue to receive emails sent to both addresses. Your outbound email will show as being sent from your Alumni address @southamptonalumni.ac.uk

What happens after one year

After the 1-year period of ongoing email access, you will have the chance to extend your alumni email for another year to September 2027, under our pilot scheme, which is monitoring the viability of continuing to offer this as an ongoing benefit.

Please be reassured that this does not affect any of the other benefits open to alumni – from career support, campus library access to discounts on courses. Visit the page "Benefits and offers for alumni"  find out more about these benefits.

What do I need to do before my account expires?

Before your account expires and your Alumni account is created, make sure you do the following:

• Take a copy of any personal files you wish to keep after you leave the university, as these will be deleted after your account expires. This may include files stored on the Filestore, OneDrive, Blackboard, eAssignments.
• Check your security settings in Subscribe, and make sure you have set a secondary contact email address. This can be used to reset your account if you forget your password.

Accessing and managing your alumni email account

If you need guidance on accessing and managing your alumni email account, please read the article ‘Accessing and managing your alumni email account’.

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Not graduated students leaving the university

Overview

The following procedure is for students enrolled after 2016. Students enrolled before 2016 need to contact ServiceLine if necessary.

Once the Student Office marks you as "Withdrawn", you will receive a warning email saying that your account is due to expire in 28 days. This happens to give you time to re-organise the content of your account and to transfer any data you want to keep.

28 days after the warning email, your university account will become an Alumni email account.

Description of the process

The warning email (mentioned in the section above) will explain that your account will transition to an alumni email address. As part of this transition, you will see your primary email alias change from @soton.ac.uk to @southamptonalumni.ac.uk, however emails will continue be received from both addresses. Outbound emails will show as being sent from @southamptonalumni.ac.uk.

Your alumni email address will be an email account only, there will be no access to other University systems and services.

Accessing and managing your alumni email account

If you need guidance on accessing and managing your alumni email account, please read the article ‘Accessing and managing your alumni email account’.

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Students becoming staff

Staff and student account will always be separate.

As soon as iSolutions activates your staff account, you can request to:

• Transfer your emails, contacts, and email addresses
• Have access to the High-Performance Computing facility (IRIDIS)
• Have access to your Blackboard modules 
  
  

How to request the transfer of your student data to your staff account

You can request to move the data listed above the day after you have subscribed to your staff account. What you need to do:

1. Set up your staff account through Subscribe
2. Wait for your staff email account to be created. After creating your account, you will have to wait up to 24 hours for all systems and services (email included) to become available 
3. Request transition from one account to the other filling the form User IT Account Transfer. Please note: the synchronisation process will take up to 24 hours before completing.
4. Transfer files and content from your old IT account to your new account, please read the knowledge base article "Uploading files or folders from your local storage to OneDrive".
   If you are using a computer managed by iSolutions and the instructions listed in the article "Uploading files or folders from your local storage to OneDrive" don't work please read the article "Moving Filestore from one account to another".

You can also create an automatic email forwarding by creating a rule in Outlook. If you need guidance, please read the Microsoft article "Use inbox rules in Outlook.com".

Postgraduate Research Students (PGRs) that had previously access to a Research or Resource filestore can request access to the same filestore using one of the following forms:

• Filestore access (use this for to request access to a Resource filestore)
• Research Filestore request form (use this for to request access to a Research filestore)

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Guidance for Postgraduate Research students (PGRs)

PGRs who are leaving having been awarded a doctorate / Mphil

If you are a PGR student leaving the university after being awarded, please read the section Graduated students leaving the university.

PGRs who are becoming staff

Staff and student accounts will always be separate.

As soon as iSolutions activates your staff account, you can request to:

• Transfer your emails, contacts, and email addresses
• Have access to the High-Performance Computing facility (IRIDIS)
• Have access to your Blackboard modules 

If you have been an undergraduate or postgraduate taught student at the University and qualified after 2013 and taken a break between studies you will have a xxx@southamptonalumni.ac.uk email address. This was due to be discontinued at the end of September 2025 but after further consultation, we are offering existing alumni the opportunity to extend their email access until September 2026, you will then be offered the chance to opt – in again to September 2027. This is part of a 2-year pilot scheme.

Please note, that all accounts must have Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) enabled. If you have MFA turned on as a student, your MFA settings stay the same. If you need help, please see the article ‘How to set up and manage Microsoft Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)’.

If you would like any further information about this change, please visit our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs). 

If you have studied here in any capacity without a break, you will not have any alumni accounts as your various accounts will have been transferred over.

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Getting IT help

If you need help, please contact ServiceLine or visit one of our Tech Hubs.

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Related content

Staff resources

How to access your Alumni email account

Requesting an extension to a computing account

How to set up and manage Microsoft Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)