G Suite Known Issues
Access
Cloud Search
See the Google Cloud Search Help Center.
Drive
See also the Google Drive help center.
Description: Users trying to submit the same document as a new template will receive a message stating the template already exists.
Workaround: Create a copy of the document, set it's sharing setting to either Anyone at <your domain> can find and access or a more public option, and submit the copied document to the gallery.
Description: In Google Sheets, importrange is a way to circumvent the "Disable options to download, print, and copy for commenters and viewers" option.
Workaround: No workaround at this time.
Description: The OS X operating system identifies a group of files in a directory as a "package", although the package will appear as a single file when viewed in Finder or other OSX tools. Other operating systems like Windows and Linux do not support this type of package directory, and, currently, neither does Drive.
Workaround: While the files will appear as folders in Drive, they will display normally once opened
Description: Word documents that are saved to the DriveFS folder are appearing as ZIP files in Drive.
Workaround: Make a copy of the affected file in the Drive File Stream folder. The new file should correctly appear in Google Drive web.
Communication
Contacts
See also Directory Help.
Description: The legacy Contacts UI is no longer integrated into Gmail, but is available at contacts.google.com. As a result, Gmail delegates no longer have access to the delegated contacts manager. In order to set up delegation in Contacts, please see https://support.google.com/a/answer/2590392?&ref_topic=3056059. If your organization relies on accessing contacts delegation through Gmail, we can assist you in migrating these delegates to the Contacts UI. To request such migration, or to get help with questions about these changes, please open a support case and mention issue number 115433759.
- Delegation will continue to be supported going forward
- The Contacts UI supports Contacts delegation when accessed in standalone mode
- In the standalone Contacts UI delegation can be accessed from the left nav bar
Description: We’ve identified that some users were dependent on delegates’ ability to manage Contact groups in the old version of Gmail delegation. This functionality has changed in the new version. Delegates are still able to view, create and email individual contacts and groups of contacts when in delegated Gmail, but cannot modify or delete contact groups. As before, access to contacts and contact groups is available via the Contacts Picker, by clicking on the “To” link in the Gmail “Compose” window. Generally, users who were previously using Gmail delegation to manage other aspects of contacts are encouraged to set up delegation within the Contacts product.
Gmail
See Fix a problem in the Gmail Help Center.
Reported date: 09/11/2018
Description: Contacts delegate access was formerly granted implicitly in some scenarios, when creating delegates with Classic Gmail UI. With the launch of new Gmail UI however, contacts delegation must be explicitly granted. This change in product behavior has happened for security reasons. If you are attempting to replicate the former implicit delegation structure, please contact support to discuss available options and reference the issue number 115433759.
Google+
Description: Customers using Google+ Chrome extensions may experience a lack of functionality, or encounter a 404 error.
Workaround: No workaround at this time.
Groups
See the Google Groups Help Center.
Hangouts
See also Fix problems with Hangouts.
Users with no profile picture have inconsistent display icons
Can't change profile photo with iOS app when both Google+ and Google Photos are disabled
Hangouts Chrome extension does not support spell check
Description: Some users are not able to initiate one-to-one conversations with a subset of their contacts list. Affected conversations contain no messages and have been idle for at least 10 days.
Workaround: No workaround at this time.
Description: When there are multiple Calendar events with the same Hangouts video call link attached, the call will be available only to the external invitees of the first call. If an external user is invited to a named Hangout, but he was not invited to the previous call, the message "This party is over" will be displayed.
Workaround: Use a new meeting name when the list of invitees is different from the first meeting instance.
Description: This issue pertains to a small subset of G Suite users who:
- Currently use Google Talk (as opposed to Google Hangouts)
- Have never previously upgraded to Google Hangouts and downgraded back to Google Talk
- Have chat history enabled
For users who meet these criteria, it’s possible that chats sent and received from 11:00AM PST January 13 to 8:00AM PST January 21 are not visible in chat archives in Gmail or Google Vault.
To further clarify the scope of the issue, these chats were successfully sent to their intended recipients.
Workaround: This issue occurred within the timeframes listed above. Any chats since January 21 are visible as normal. We’re currently working on restoring the visibility of the affected Google Talk chats without causing any disruptions to the Google Talk, Gmail, or Google Vault services.
When sharing a window in Meet, if you play a Microsoft PowerPoint or Keynote presentation in the shared window, the slideshow appears blank to other viewers. This is because choosing 'Play' or 'View Slide Show' shows the presentation in full screen mode, and you're only sharing a window.
Workaround: Share your whole screen before launching a presentation in Play or Slide Show mode.
Calendar
See Troubleshoot issues in the Google Calendar help center.
Description: Google Calendar can take up to 48 hours to propagate changes in deeply nested groups to event permissions.
Reported date: 05/15/2017
Description: In rare cases, some users don’t receive email notifications when they’re invited to a new Calendar event.
Workaround: Organizations that experience this issue can avoid it by asking their users to do the following:
- Don’t modify Calendar events immediately after creating them.
- Disable the "Automatically decline events if you have a scheduling conflict." setting.
- Avoid adding both a large group (more than about 200 members) and a resource (for example, a conference room) at the same time when first creating a Calendar event.
Meet
The reporting APIs available for classic Hangouts do not apply to Hangouts Meet
People can't hear an attendee who is using a MacOS computer
If people can’t hear you in a Hangouts Meet video meeting, make sure that your microphone is turned on. Click 
If you are using a Mac computer and your microphone is on, but people still can’t hear you, try the following options. In some cases, Mac computer settings may prevent Meet from using the computer’s microphone.
- Unmute your device. Go to your device system settings and make sure your microphone is not turned off.
- Unmute yourself in Meet. At the bottom of the screen, click
to turn on your microphone.
Tip: Other people can mute you, but can’t unmute you. - In your Chrome browser, enter chrome://restart to restart Chrome and reset all Chrome apps and extensions.
- Restart your computer.
Rooms in different timezones cannot be booked for all-day events
Presentations appear blank when sharing a window
Control
Administration
For an overview of Admin Console tasks, see Use your Admin console.
Description: For advanced content matches, Content Compliance rules with regular expressions sometimes don’t match on .xls files. This issue may sometimes affect some other file types such as .csv.
Reported date: 09/03/2018
Description: An Admin trying to manage Team Drive users might see a blank window.
Manage Team Drive users in the Admin Console > Apps > G Suite > Drive and Docs > Manage Team Drives (subject to edition availability).
Workaround: Assign the Admin a G Suite license that includes Team Drives and make sure the Drive and Docs service is enabled for them.
Billing
See Billing issues.
Data migration
See also Use G Suite on mobile devices.
G Suite Migration for Microsoft Exchange
Description: On occasion, GSMME doesn't adhere to the specified start and end dates when migrating email from an IMAP server. Instead of migrating messages from within the specified dates, GSMME will estimate (and then migrate) all the emails in the source account.
Workaround: Select a specific IMAP server type, instead of "Other". If the IMAP server you're using doesn't appear on the list, you can choose "Courier IMAP" (if your IMAP server uses "INBOX" as the IMAP path prefix), or "Dovecot IMAP" if it doesn't use an IMAP path prefix.
Vault
See the Google Vault Help Center.
Device syncing
Google Cloud Directory Sync
Description: Google Cloud Directory Sync (GCDS) resets the Area field to an empty value that prevents the user location showing in Google Calendar.
To temporarily fix this, set a location attribute for a user using an API. Then, under Locations, make sure that the Type and Area fields are set to Desk.
G Suite Sync for Microsoft Outlook
Description: GSSMO with Outlook running on certain versions of Microsoft Windows does not return search results. If you are affected by this issue, please apply the latest Microsoft Office updates. More information can be found at Outlook known issues in the June 2017 security updates specifically Issue #5.
Google Mobile Management
Description: Google Apps Device Policy app 8.22 on Wear OS suddenly displays the error message: There was an unexpected error. Please unregister and re-register your account to fix the issue. Otherwise please contact your domain administrators."
Workaround: For those users who would like to continue using an Wear OS smartwatch:
- Move users with Wear OS devices into a separate OU and change management level from Advanced to Basic for the respective OU, or set management from Advanced to Basic for the domain.
- Add G Suite account back onto the Wear OS device and activate the Device Policy app again.
Collaboration
Docs
See the Docs Help Center.
Forms
See the Forms Help Center.
Keep
See the Google Keep Help Center.
Sheets
See the Sheets Help Center.
Sites
See the Google Sites Help Center.
Classic Sites
Description: Google Sites can take up to 48 hours to propagate changes in deeply nested groups to access permissions.
Slides
See the Google Slides Help Center.
Education
Classroom
See the Google Classroom Help Center.
Expeditions
See the Google Expeditions Help Center.
How we define a Known Issue
We work on isolating and fixing every product issue that we're aware of. Some issues might not be listed here. We characterize known Issues as follows:
- We can consistently reproduce an unexpected behavior.
- Engineers are actively working towards a fix to correct the behavior.
- The issue is observed globally and has generated a large number of support cases.
What's not a Known Issue
- Product outages: Up-to-date outage information is posted within the G Suite Status Dashboard.
- Feature Ideas: We'd love to hear your thoughts! Go ahead and file a Feature Idea.
- Low impact issues: We're also working to fix low impact issues but might not list them here. If you think you might be impacted by an issue that's not listed here, you can contact us.
What to expect from a Known Issue
We intend to fix every issue listed in Known Issues. However, we can't guarantee timelines. In the meantime, we'll add available workarounds as we discover them. For questions or comments, contact us.
