How to Delete G Suite Account Without Losing Any Data?
Employee turnover is a natural part of doing business. Businesses using Google applications to run their business must consider the process to delete G Suite Account. As an administrator for your business’s Google Apps account, you should delete the former employee’s service promptly to maintain licenses while keeping overhead costs down. You can delete the G Suite account without losing data. The following step by step process will guide you through:
What this article is about:
- Step#1: Limit Former Employee Access
- Step#2: Ensure Business Continuity
- Step#3: Delete and Divert
- Step#4: Use a Third-Party Backup Solution
Step#1: Limit Former Employee Access
The first step in deleting a G Suite account is to limit the exiting user’s access to the account. Disable the two-step security verification (2FA). Continuing to employ a two-step verification process can make it difficult to secure data within the account and harder for someone to take over projects associated with this account. Then reset the account’s password. Finally, reset all login cookies from the administrator screen. This forces any devices logged into the account to be logged out and requires the new password to be entered before accessing the account.
Step#2: Ensure Business Continuity
Take a backup of the account (more on this in step#4)
It may take time to go through all the files, emails, and calendar sessions. Therefore, you should appoint someone as an executor of the departing employees Google apps account. This person will be responsible for determining who:
- Accesses emails
- Transfers ownership of any files located in the departing users Google drive account
- Transfers ownership of the departing users Google groups
- Accesses any shared calendars
The executor of the account should also set up a vacation autoresponder letting others know that the departing user is no longer working with the company and whom to contact instead.
Additionally, the executor will look through the departing employees account to determine which of the remaining Google services were used on behalf of your organisation by the exiting user. The agent will then decide whom to turn the access over to.
Step#3: Delete and Divert
After approximately 90 days, or when your administrator has reassigned all emails, files, and calendar events, it is time to delete the Google apps account. It is important to remember, however, that once the G Suite account removal is complete, any emails sent to that account will bounce back as undeliverable. Therefore, it is essential that you plan for a diversion of these messages.
There are three different ways you can divert emails from a closed account. They include:
- Catch all addresses – this is an email that intercepts any email sent to your domain in which a user account does not exist. A catch-all includes closed apps accounts and mistyped addresses.
- User alias – assigns the departed users email address as an alias to a current employee. Typically, this would be the executor or someone hired to replace the former employee.
- Google group – create a group using the same address as the recently closed account. You can assign several employees to receive notifications of messages received.
Step#4: Use a Third-Party Backup Solution
Actually is should be your step#0! It is important to remember that any file or email not distributed before the Google apps account entirely deletes will be lost forever. That is why it is so important to have a backup solution. Google only allows for recovery of files for up to 30 days and restoration can only go back to the original user.
This retention policy is what makes third party backup solutions like CloudAlly unique. Unlike Google’s limited recovery ability, we provide unlimited cloud storage with no expiration date. Even after you have deleted a Google apps account from your Google dashboard, the former employee’s emails, contacts, calendar events, and files remain stored on our servers for you to distribute. Your administrator can search this data and restore it to a current employee’s apps account whenever necessary.
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