As an administrator, you can add a recovery email address and phone number for admins and users in your organization. Recovery information helps users access their Google Workspace account when they can’t sign in.
About recovery information
If you set up a recovery email address and phone number, it’s used to:
- Send a user a code to sign in to their account if they’re locked out.
- Block someone from using a user’s account without their permission.
- Make it easier for a user to prove that an account is theirs.
- Tell a user if there’s suspicious activity on their account.
Note: A recovery email address is different from an alternate email address. For details, see Give a user an additional "email alias" address (sales@).
Before you begin
- Choose an email address that the user or admin can sign in to and that’s different from their Google Workspace account address.
- Use a mobile phone number that gets text messages and belongs only to the user or admin.
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Turn on password recovery so that users can reset a forgotten password on the sign-in page. For details, see Turn on password recovery.
Add or update a recovery email address or phone number
To complete these steps, you need the appropriate User management privilege. Without this privilege, you won't see all the controls needed to complete these steps.
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Sign in to your Google Admin console.
Sign in using your administrator account (does not end in @gmail.com).
- In the Admin console, go to Menu
Directory
Users.
- Click the user
- Enter a recovery email address and phone number
