If a user leaves your organization you can keep their posts and data from Google Currents by archiving them. An Archived User (AU) license is a separate license from a full user. With archiving you can maintain an AU’s data more securely, while preventing them from accessing Currents or other Google Workspace services.
Archiving users preserves the user’s posts and profile data. Polls, poll votes, photos, and other data is also preserved, but it may take up to 7 days for them to appear in the stream. Archived and suspended user data can also be searched for with the search bar.
Note: You will need an Archived User license for this process. To learn more about buying this license, read View and buy Archived User licenses.
Allowlist your domain for user archive in Currents
Archiving users for Currents is off by default. To allowlist your domain for archived users in Currents, please contact support.
Note: Deleted users and users who were suspended before May 4th, 2019 cannot have their data archived. Once you allowlist your domain, posts by all suspended or archived users in your domain will be visible and archived going forward.
Delete user information
A user may reach out to your organization to ask for their Currents data to be deleted. If a user wants their data removed from Currents, follow these steps:
-
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
Apps
Google Workspace
- Click Profiles.
- Next to the user, check the box.
- At the top right, click Delete Profiles.
- At the bottom of the window, check the required box.
- Click OK.
- Click OK again.
- Wait for the process to finish and click OK.
Note: It can take up to 48 hours for data from an archived or suspended user to change in Currents.
Known Issues
Archived accounts are not searchable after 24 hours
Workaround: It may take 72 hours for an archived users data to become searchable in Currents.
Archived users show as "Suspended" in the Currents Profile Explorer in the Admin Console
Workaround: Archived users are displayed as archived on the Users page in the Admin console, not the Currents Explorer page.
Unsupported data
When using an Archived User license for Currents, not all data will be made available. The following data is not supported:
- Profile picture displays on posts or comments for suspended and archived accounts
- Pictures posted by archived users in posts
- Archived user’s profile page
- Archived users mentions in posts
- Archived user poll vote counts
- Archived users in Followers/Following lists
- Suspended users in Search prompts by users who follow them
- Archived users in public community member lists
- Polls created by suspended users
- Archived account Flickr profile photos for iOS
- Archived user contact sheets in Android
Related articles
- View and buy Archived User licenses
- Manage former employees and their data
- Archive or unarchive a user
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