Leaving school? Take your work with you.

What changes when you leave

Schools provision Microsoft 365 accounts under an education licence. The account belongs to the institution. The moment a student is no longer enrolled — typically within a defined window after their final exams — IT deactivates the licence. Depending on the institution, the account may go through a soft delete (recoverable for ~30 days), a hard delete (gone), or a transition to an alumni account that keeps email but drops file access.

The detail varies considerably by country and by institution type. Use the toggle below to switch terminology for your education system.

What's at stake

A final-year student's school account typically holds between one and ten gigabytes of work accumulated over five to seven years:

• Coursework drafts and final submissions — essays, investigations, project reports, lab write-ups, capstone work.
• Class OneNote notebooks — the one your teacher set up where you typed in-class notes alongside teacher handouts.
• Personal OneNote notebooks — exam revision, flashcards, mind maps, your own organisation.
• Presentations & slide decks — group projects, class talks, society pitches.
• Spreadsheets — fieldwork data, practical results, budgeting, anything you put into Excel.
• Photos & scans — whiteboard captures, worksheet scans, art portfolios, design technology sketches.
• Email attachments — reference letters, marked work, certificates, reading lists.

Most of this didn't feel important when you saved it. A lot of it becomes useful again later — when you apply for university or an apprenticeship, when you start a degree that overlaps with what you studied, when you need to prove the timeline of your own work, when a dissertation lands on the same topic as a school essay you wrote.

Pick your path

The right approach depends on who you are. We've built a dedicated page for each audience:

The realistic options

There are three honest paths. Pick whichever fits your situation:

1. Manual download — go through OneDrive folder by folder using the web download, then try to extract OneNote notebooks one section at a time using Microsoft's built-in export. Works for OneDrive (with a 20 GB / 10,000-file ceiling). Doesn't reliably work for class OneNote, which Microsoft treats as owned by the class, not by you.
2. mydocs.school — sign in with your school account, see every notebook attached to your account, download a zip. Works for OneDrive and OneNote (including class notebooks scoped to your own section). Free for students whose school subscribes; ask your school to enable it if not.
3. Ask your IT team to bulk-export for you — works if your school's IT team has time, the tools, and the appetite. In practice this is rare; bulk export tools like SharePoint Migration Manager need an admin to drive them and are designed for tenant-to-tenant migrations rather than per-student exports.

Per-workload guides

• Export your school OneDrive
• Export OneNote class notebooks
• Export personal OneNote notebooks
• Export school Outlook email

What it commits to

• UK GDPR

  DPA on request

• Hosted in London

  DigitalOcean, no CDN

• No file content stored

  Streams in memory

• No AI training

  Ever, no exceptions

• Microsoft OAuth 2.0

  Respects MFA & CA

• Read-only scopes

  Cannot write to your tenant

Common questions

When does a school Microsoft 365 account actually close?

It varies by institution. Schools and colleges typically deactivate accounts within 30 to 90 days of a student leaving. Universities often keep alumni email but cut OneDrive, OneNote and SharePoint access on a similar timeline. Ask your IT team for the specific date — most students who lose work do so because they assumed the window was longer than it was.

Can I still get my files back after my account is deactivated?

Almost never. Most institutions delete data after a brief retention window and have no obligation to restore it. The only reliable answer is to download what you want to keep before the account closes.

Why is OneNote harder than OneDrive?

OneDrive has a download button. OneNote class notebooks don't — they live with the class itself, not in your OneDrive, and Microsoft's official OneNote app can't export a notebook you don't own. You either lose the work, hand-copy it to a personal account, or use a tool like mydocs.school that pulls the underlying .one files via Microsoft Graph.

Does my school have to opt in for me to use mydocs.school?

Yes. Microsoft 365 multi-tenant apps require tenant-wide admin consent. That's a 30-second job for an IT admin — see the request-access page if your school isn't onboarded yet.

Is this free for students?

Yes, when your school subscribes. mydocs.school is sold to schools at £1.20 per leaver per 60-day download window, billed annually in GBP. Students don't pay anything and don't need a card. If your school hasn't onboarded yet, the request-access page drafts an email you can send to your IT team.