When an employee or freelancer leaves your company, keeping their Google Workspace account active means paying for a license you no longer need. However, deleting the account without proper preparation can result in losing valuable emails, documents, and business information.
Here’s how to off board users safely.
Step 1: Create a Central Email Archive
A recommended approach is to create a dedicated Google Workspace mailbox, such as:
archive@rex5.com
Instead of maintaining multiple inactive mailboxes, you can consolidate former employees’ email histories into one searchable account.
This account requires its own license and sufficient storage, but it can be more economical than keeping several unused accounts active.
Step 2: Migrate the Employee’s Emails
- Open the Google Admin Console.
- Navigate to Data > Data import & export > Data import.
- Select Business Gmail.
- Authorize the source account.
- Configure the departing employee’s mailbox as the source and your central archive mailbox as the destination.
- Configure the migration settings and start the import.
Depending on mailbox size, migration may take several hours.
Step 3: Choose Between Deleting the User and Cloud Identity Free
After preserving the emails, you have two main options.
Delete the User
If you no longer need the employee’s account, you can delete it through Directory > Users.
During deletion, Google Workspace offers an option to transfer supported data, including Google Drive files, to another user but not the emails.
Keep the User With Cloud Identity Free
Another option is to remove the employee’s paid Google Workspace license while retaining their account under Cloud Identity Free (does not include Gmail or Google Calendar access).
This allows you to: Keep the user’s organizational identity and preserve their Google Drive files without immediately transferring ownership.
DONE!
Need expert IT support without hiring full-time staff? REX5 provides part-time IT services specializing in employee onboarding and offboarding, SaaS access management, and security to keep your business efficient, organized, and protected.
