This page is for administrators who manage accounts for an organization or team. To delete your personal Google Account, go to Delete your Google Account.
Choose how your organization or team signed up for Google Workspace:
- Domain verified—You verified ownership of your organization's domain
- Email verified—You verified your business email address
When a user leaves your domain-verified organization, you can delete their Google Workspace account. The user loses access to all services and data associated with their account.
Before their account is deleted, the user can transfer personal data they want to take with them. Also, an admin can transfer important company data to another user. Any data that’s not transferred is deleted. Some data is retained for 20 days, during which time you can restore the deleted user.
- Step 1: Transfer important data
- Step 2: Delete one or more users
- Step 3: After deleting the user
- Important: How billing changes
- What data gets deleted
- When not to delete a user
- Deleting Vault users
- Delete your own admin account
- Restore a deleted user
Step 1: Transfer important data
To keep data within your organization, you or the user need to transfer data they own to another user. Super admins can transfer some data during the deletion process. Other admins must transfer data before deleting the user.
Deleting multiple users? Export their data instead with the Data Export tool.
Expand section | Collapse all & go to top
Before deleting the user, transfer their data to another owner as follows:
Any admin can transfer...
- Gmail messages and content—You have 2 options:
- Drive and Docs files the user owns—Doesn't include files in shared drives. Go to: Transfer Drive files to a new owner.
- Google Sites pages the user created—These are included with Drive files. Go to: Transfer Drive files to a new owner.
- Looker Studio assets owned by the user—Use the Data Transfer API.
- Classroom classes—Applies when deleting a teacher's Education edition account. Go to: Transfer ownership of a class.
Super admins can transfer...
During the deletion process, super admins can transfer the user's Drive and Docs files, primary Calendar data, and Looker Studio data. Go below to the steps.
Ask the user to transfer...
- Shared calendars they own—These aren’t deleted, but you may want to ask the user to transfer ownership before they leave. Send them to Share your calendar. They should give the new owner permissions to make changes and manage sharing on the shared calendar.
- Google Play developer apps—Send them to Transfer apps to a different developer account.
- Brand account assets—If there are other owners, the assets are automatically transferred to another owner’s Google Workspace account. If the user is the sole owner, they can choose a new owner. Send them to: Manage your Brand Account.
More options: Options to preserve former employee data
You can let users export any personal data they want to take with them, before you delete their account. This includes their email, contacts, Drive and Docs files, Calendar data, YouTube videos, and more.
- Allow Google Takeout for users in your organization. Learn more
- Have the user download their data. Learn more
Step 2: Delete one or more users
-
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.
- Choose an option: Delete one user
In the Users list, point to the user and click More optionsDelete multiple users
Tip for searching: If the list is long, type in the search bar at the very top to find the user's account page. Then at the left of the account page, click Delete user. Show me how
- Check the box next to each user that you want to delete.
Tip: If all the users belong to the same organizational unit, select it on the left to find the users more easily. - At the top-right corner, click More options
- Check the box next to each user that you want to delete.
- Depending on your privileges as an admin, choose an option:
- Super admins—Next to Data in other apps, choose an option:
- To not transfer the user's data, select Don't transfer data.
- To transfer the user's data:
- Select Transfer.
- In the Search for a user field, enter the name or email address of the user you want to transfer files to.
- Under Select data to transfer, check the boxes next to each option you want.
For Drive and Docs, you can include files that aren't shared with anyone. If you don't select this option, ownership of private files might still be transferred if the files are in a folder that's shared. If the folder isn't shared, ownership of shared files within that folder might be transferred but not the folder, leaving the files unbrowseable. The new owner can find these files with a Drive search:
is:unorganized owner:me.
- Other admins—To confirm that you understand the impact of deleting the account, check the boxes.
- Super admins—Next to Data in other apps, choose an option:
- Click Delete User or Delete Users.
If you chose the option to transfer data, the deleted user's account is suspended until the transfer completes. The account is then deleted and an email is sent to the user who's receiving the transferred data.
Step 3: After deleting a user
Expand section | Collapse all & go to top
How billing changes
- Flexible billing plan—When you delete a user account, your monthly rate is prorated accordingly. For example, if you add a user on April 1 and delete them on April 15, we charge you for only half a month of service.
- Annual/Fixed-Term billing plan—Deleting an account doesn't reduce the number of licenses you have and doesn't affect your billing. You can assign the deleted user's license to another user, but if you later restore the deleted user, you'll need another license.
What data gets deleted
Data owned solely by the user—that isn't transferred before deleting their account—is permanently deleted. Click below for details.
Expand section | Collapse all & go to top
Google Workspace data and all assets associated with the account, including:
- Gmail messages and attachments
- Drive files the user owns—These files are saved for 20 days but are only accessible if you restore the user.
- Google Sites pages created by the user
- The user's primary calendar—Also retained for 20 days.
- Looker Studio assets—Includes reports and data sources the user owns.
- Classroom classes they own—Applies if they are a teacher with an Education edition account.
- YouTube videos, Blogger blogs, and other non-core services content
- Google Play developer apps
- Brand assets accounts with no other owners
- Cloud Identity data
- Google Cloud resources can be orphaned—The user's Identity and Access Management (IAM) policy bindings remain on the associated resources for up to 30 days. If the user isn't a member of a Cloud organization, any projects become orphaned. Learn more at Suspended vs orphaned Project resources
To save any of this data, go above to Transfer data before deleting.
- Files in shared drives—Your organization owns these files, not users. Learn more about shared drives.
- Files that other users own—For 20 days after the user is deleted, anyone with access to files in the deleted users’ folders can use Drive search to find those files. After 20 days, these files are automatically moved to their owners' My Drive. If you can’t find a file you have access to, go to Find or recover a file.
- Groups the user created, even if they were the only member
- Shared calendars the user owns
When not to delete a user
You should delete a user's account only if that person is leaving your organization. Don't delete an account to do any of the following:
- Resolve a conflicting account when adding an unmanaged user to your organization. The user loses data and access to Google Workspace services when you delete their account. Instead, learn to resolve a conflicting account.
- Change a username. Create an alias—or nickname—for the user, instead. Learn more at Change a Directory user's name or email address.
- Block a user temporarily from accessing your organization's Google services. You can instead Suspend a user temporarily.
- Save the cost of a license. To keep the user's data and reduce costs, assign an Archived User license to their account, instead. Learn more at Archive former employee accounts.
Deleting Vault users
If your organization uses Google Vault, any retention rules or holds placed on the deleted user's data no longer apply. Data can be purged immediately. It can't be recovered even if you restore the user within 20 days. User data in Vault exports remains available for download until the export package expires. Learn more about deleting Vault users.
Important: You can't transfer data or delete a user who is on litigation hold. To delete the user, an admin with Vault privileges must first lift the hold (can take up to 48 hours to take effect). For details, go to Delete a user with data on hold.
Delete your own admin account
You can’t delete your own administrator account. You need to assign super administrator privileges to another user, and have them delete your account.
Restore a deleted user
You can restore a deleted account for up to 20 days. Some data is also restored, including their Gmail content and Drive files that weren't transferred, and their primary calendar. For details, go to Restore a recently deleted user.
