Manage your subscriptions and groups

You might belong to a lot of groups, and have access to even more. Use these tips to stay organized and manage your groups.

In this section, you learn how to: Mark groups and messages as favorites View and edit membership settings Approve or block new messages Remove or ban people from a group

Mark groups and messages as favorites

You can mark groups and messages as favorites to make them easy to find. Favorite groups appear in the Favorites list on the left menu.

Favorites are account-specific. When you mark an item as a favorite, it appears as a favorite in your account only. It doesn't appear as a favorite for anyone else.

1. Sign in to Google Groups.
2. To mark a group as a favorite, choose an option:
   • On the far right of the group entry, click the Star .
   • Click a groupto the left of the group name, click the Star .

   The group is added to your Favorite groups list in the left menu. If you use Groups with more than one domain, the group appears under its domain name on the left.

3. To remove a group from your Favorites list, choose an option:
   • On the far right of the group entry, click the Star .
   • Click a groupto the left of the group name, click the Star .
   • In the left panel, click Favorite groups or the domain name. Point to the group nameclick MoreUnfavorite group.
4. To mark a message as a favorite:
   1. Click the group containing the message.
   2. In the left panel, click Conversationschoose an option:
      • On the far right of a conversation entry, click the Star . This marks the most recent message in the conversation as a favorite.
      • Click a conversationon the far right of a message, click the Star .

      The conversation containing the message is added to your Starred conversations list in the left menu.

5. To remove a message or conversation as a favorite:
   1. Click the group containing the message.
   2. In the left panel, click Conversationschoose an option:
      • On the far right of a conversation entry, click the Star . This removes all messages in the conversation as favorites and removes the conversation from the Starred conversations list.
      • Click a conversationon the far right of a message, click the Star . This removes the conversation from the Starred conversations list unless the conversation contains other messages marked as favorites.

View and edit membership settings

Your subscription settings determine whether and how you receive email from groups. Global settings let you choose whether to receive notifications and invitations, change your display language, and check your bounce status.

Manage your subscriptions

1. Sign in to Google Groups.
2. Click the name of a group.
3. On the left, click My membership settings.
4. For Subscription, choose an option:
   • Each email—Messages are sent individually as they’re posted to the group.
   • Digest—Up to 25 complete messages are combined into single emails and sent daily.
   • Abridged—Summaries of up to 150 messages are combined into single emails and sent daily.
   • No email—Messages from the group are not sent.

   To receive abridged summaries or digests of a group’s messages, you must turn on conversation history for the group.

5. Click Save changes.

Manage your global settings

1. Sign in to Google Groups.
2. At the top right, click Settings Global settings.
3. Review or change your settings:
   • Add/Invite settings—Allow group owners and managers to invite you to join their group, add you directly, or both.
   • Notifications—Get notified if someone assigns a conversation to you.  
   • Display language—Click the link to select a default language for viewing all of your Google Account services, including Groups.
   • Bounce status—See if your email address is flagged to indicate that messages sent to you are bouncing. If so, click the link to remove the bounce status.
4. Click Save.

Approve or block new messages

You can approve or block new messages before they're sent to the rest of the group using message moderation.

Note: Posts sent by super administrators always bypass message moderation and are posted without requiring approval, even if the super admin sends a message from a delegated non-admin email account. The only exceptions are messages marked as spam. The system does not send these messages.

Turn on message moderation

Group owners and moderators can turn message moderation on or off and specify which users' messages are required to go through moderation.

1. Sign in to Google Groups.
2. Click the name of a group.
3. On the left, click Group settingsPosting policies.
4. Select your moderation options. For:

   • Message moderation—Choose a review option: Moderate all messages, Moderate messages from non-members, or No moderation.
   • New member restrictions—To review messages from new members, select New member posts are moderated.

   Note: When message moderation is turned on, moderation requests are always visible to group owners. Group managers and members might see moderation requests based on the group settings.

5. (Optional) To send a notification when a moderated message is rejected, for Rejected message notification, click On.
6. Click Save changes.

If message moderation isn't working the way you expect, see Troubleshoot unexpected moderation behavior.

Approve or reject pending messages

Requires the Who can moderate content permission.

Content moderators get an email spam report that includes spam messages from the moderation queue. The report is sent weekly on Tuesday and Friday in the Pacific time zone, which might be Wednesday and Saturday in other time zones.

Messages that aren’t approved are automatically deleted after 14 days. Messages marked as spam are automatically deleted after 7 days.

1. Sign in to Google Groups.
2. Click the name of a group.
3. On the left, for Conversations, click Pending.
4. (Optional) To read a message, click it.
5. (Optional) To approve or reject a single message, in the message entry, click Approve message  or Reject message .
6. (Optional) To perform an action on multiple messages:
   1. Check the boxes next to the messages.
   2. At the top, choose an option:
      • To approve the messages, click Approve messages .
      • To reject the messages, click Reject messages .
      • To approve the messages and automatically approve all future posts by those authors, click Approve author .

        This option allows the author to post directly to the group in the future and supersedes group level moderation and posting permissions.

      • To ban the authors from the conversation and report the messages as spam, click Reject author .

Block people from replying to conversations

You can create a new conversation and prevent people from replying to it if you don’t want responses. You can also prevent people from replying to existing conversations.

For details, see Lock conversations.

Remove or ban people from a group

You can remove a user who’s already a member of a group, or ban a user from joining a group.

Remove members from a group

Requires the Who can manage members permission.

If you remove a member from a group, they no longer receive email addressed to the group. Removing a member does not delete the user's account. If you remove the group owner, the group still works.

1. Sign in to Google Groups.
2. Click the name of a group.
3. On the left, click Members.
4. Point to each member you want to removecheck the box next to their name.
5. At the top right, click Remove member OK to confirm.

Ban users from a group

Requires the Who can manage members permission.

You can ban people from a group to prevent them participating in that group. When you ban a person from a group, they can see or search for that group but can't be added or invited to join unless you unban them.

1. Sign in to Google Groups.
2. Click the name of a group.
3. To ban an existing member:
   1. On the left, click Members.
   2. Point to a member name and check the box.
   3. Click Ban member .
4. To ban non-members:
   1. In the left panel, click PeopleBanned users.
   2. In the Ban users field, enter names or email addressesclick Ban users.

View banned users or unban users

Requires the Who can manage members permission.

1. Sign in to Google Groups.
2. Click the name of a group.
3. In the left panel, click PeopleBanned users.
4. Choose an option:
   • To unban a user, in the user entry on the right, click Un-ban user .
   • To unban multiple users, check the box next to the userabove the list to the right, click  Un-ban user  .

               

Want advanced Google Workspace features for your business?

Try Google Workspace today!

 

 

_{Google, Google Workspace, and related marks and logos are trademarks of Google LLC. All other company and product names are trademarks of the companies with which they are associated.}