Google Apps

Manage user accounts

Delete a user

We don't recommend deleting your Google Apps account to address your conflicting account if you're actively using your Google Apps account for your organizational Mail, Calendar events, and other core services. Learn what to do if you have a conflicting account.

Important things to consider before deleting a user:

  • The user will no longer be able to sign in to Google Apps.
  • Any existing messages in the user's account will be lost.
  • The user's primary calendar will be deleted within five days. Shared calendars created by the user won't be deleted, but in order for another user to continue managing the shared calendar, you need to give the other user permission to Make changes AND manage sharing on the shared calendar.
  • Shared documents created by the user will be deleted within five days unless ownership is transferred. Before deleting the user, you should transfer ownership of all documents created by the user or ask the user to transfer ownership of selected documents.
  • Content in the user's non-core services (such as YouTube and Picasa Web Albums) will also be deleted.
  • Site pages created by the user are not deleted. As the administrator, you can remove the sites.
  • You may be able to restore recently deleted accounts for up to five days. After this period, deleted accounts can't be recovered.

You might also want to consider other ways to extract data prior to deleting user accounts.

If you're trying to delete a user with administrator rights and you've enabled the Postini Services at some point, you'll first need to remove the user from the list of administrators in the Postini Services console. (Learn more about transferring Postini administration rights to a different user.)

To delete a user from your domain:

  1. Sign in to the Google Admin console. 
  2. Click Users. 
  3. Check the box next to the user (or users) you want to delete.
  4. Click More actions > Delete users.
  5. When prompted, confirm that you want to delete the user.
  6. If necessary, delete the user from your Gmail contacts list.

     

Get help from expert users in the Google Apps Help Forum.

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