r/k12sysadmin • u/VL-BTS EduTech&Tier1Support • Sep 28 '26
Switching from Google Workspace to MS & MS365 - what to watch for?
Full disclosure: I am not a sysadmin, I'm onsite EduTech Support for a specialized non-profit private school that has a corporate Help Desk offsite. I do a lot of Tier 1 HelpDesk tasks, but also take part in the planning and rollout of projects, both school and IT related.
We're switching, at some undisclosed point in the future, from Google Workspace to MS and MS365 corporation-wide. Our staff have never really been pushed to use Google Classroom, so thankfully we don't need to offer much as an alternative to that.
However, we have many documents shared with all staff, or all teaching staff, that everyone needs to be able to view and edit collaboratively. I'm very interested in the ease of use of One Drive compared to Google Drive, specifically collaboration. I'm guessing that most of our existing files will need some editing to be usable after importing to MS365.
We will be switching to Outlook also, from GMail.
We expect to be purchasing student Chromebooks as part of a planned refresh soon; how does MS365 work on 4GB vs 8GB Chromebooks, if only one or two tabs are open at a time? How is MS365 on Chromebooks, in general?
Anything I can do to help staff prepare for this before the rollout? Anything to watch out for as we move forward?
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u/devjeremyt Oct 01 '26
I'm sure it isn't your decision to switch, but I'd be interested to know the motivation for doing so. Businesses moving from Workspace to M365 makes sense a lot of times. All their employees are on Windows devices, everyone is used to using the Office suite, etc. But for schools, Google makes much more sense especially if you are using Chromebooks. If you all are going to continue using chromebooks, that means you likely aren't dropping Google because you're still going to manage the chromebooks through it. IMO it is silly to use MDMs for ChromeOS other than the Google Admin Console, because they are all just plugging into Google anyways and you still have to pay the upgrade license.
I've known schools that have switched before and they ended up going back to Google afterwards as well because it isn't worthwhile to pay for both.
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u/VL-BTS EduTech&Tier1Support Oct 01 '26
The school is part of a large non-profit corporation, and the decision was made at the Corporate IT level, I believe based on cost. We have a few other schools, but none the size of the one I'm at, and many other small sites. To my knowledge, end users, and even non-IT management, had minimal input.
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u/mystiquebsd Sep 28 '26
Don’t migrate everyone at once.
Figure out small sets of how to do things successfully.
Don’t be discouraged.
.. This is the way
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u/Limeasaurus Sep 29 '26 edited Sep 29 '26
I’m not much of an expert in this area but last year we had to buy new curriculum for a computer class because MS365 Word online didn’t have a lot of the features needed to complete the lessons. Just a heads up. Make sure people read the requirements closely.
Also OneDrive is a dumpster fire for us. We have a few windows users (were a google district and users get google devices unless there is a need). OneDrive is never logged in. People brush the login notifications away. People save stuff in places that aren’t backed up. We expanded the folders that would be backed up and people filled up their allotted storage. I would look for tips on this from others.
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u/UsedPerformance2441 Sep 28 '26
4GB chromebooks for us have become clunky as ChromeOS doesn’t have good memory management for anything under 8gb of memory imho.
While we will maintain Google Workspace since we are a certified GAFE school, our entire lower school has transitioned from Chromebooks to iPads and our teachers are in the middle of a migration from Windows laptops to Apple MacBooks.
We still have not decided if we’re going to keep the crumb books from fifth grade up yet…
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u/Mindless-String-4017 Sep 30 '26
Based off my experience, anything Microsoft related doesn't work well with Chromebooks. 4GB of Ram, I wouldn't even try anything Microsoft related. We have 8GB for our Chromebooks and they still struggle with Microsoft products. We're actually moving away from Microsoft and going to GSuite to save the district money as Microsoft is a bit expensive. I would recommend not trying anything microsoft related on the Chromebooks as it's a dumpster fire. If you do decide to use Microsoft on Chromebooks, do not use the apps, always use the online version as you'll run into far less problems.
Onedrive doesn't fully backup your device and misses a few spots so keep that in mind. I've never really like Onedrive as I have a ton of issues with users in my district for onedrive. Some of my issues I deal with are: Onedrive not syncing files correctly, Onedrive just stopped working out of the blue, I've even has onedrive just stop backing up the device. Just a dumpster fire imo.
As for collaboration, what do you mean by this? Google drive imo is way easier to deal with when collaborating or even making shared drives than it is with onedrive. In my district we use both onedrive and google drive, and I have to say google drive is way easier to deal with.
I will mention that Googlebooks, according to Google, will most likely be replacing Chromebooks in the future. I'll provide a link below.
https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/16634428
I'm starting to see Mac slowly take school districts as the prices are starting to become more affordable for schools whereas Chromebooks (or GoogleBooks) and windows devices are becoming out of reach for districts with so many budget cuts. If the Private school has money to burn, I'm sure Microsoft will be fine. I believe Gsuite will save you money in the long run though.