Accessing Email from a former employee

Important Note:

Generally, when an employee leaves the company, their Google account is deleted and all of their email is removed with that. We have a 20 day window to restore the account. If you know you will need to access email from a former employee, you must inform IT BEFORE that employee leaves. If you are able, you should work with the employee while they are still employed so they can forward the necessary emails to your account. After that, email forwarding should be all that is necessary going forward.

Options for accessing a former employee's email

For each option, please realize that this should be communicated to IT via ticket before the employee leaves.

Option 1 - A downloadable archive of all email - Recommended for long term archival needs

We can download all of the employee's email from Google and upload it to a portable instance of the Thunderbird email client. To view the email you would need to download this file and open it. Downloading email from Google can take several days.

In most cases this should be the preferred option as it allows us to delete the employee's account while retaining the email.

Option 2 - Receive delegate access for the account - Recommended for short term access

This can either be setup by the employee before they leave, or IT can set this up after the employee leaves. When this is setup you will receive an email from Google asking you to accept delegate access. Once you do, you will be able to switch from your account to the delegate account within Gmail. This will allow you to send and receive email as the former employee.

This is a temporary solution only as this requires us to pay for an active Google account for the former employee. If you prefer to do this method, you must submit a ticket to IT and include the date that access can be removed.

Option 3 - Receive login credentials for the account - Not recommended

With approval, you can request login credentials and login as the former employee. This is not recommended and should only be used for very short term emergencies.

This is a temporary solution only as this requires us to pay for an active Google account for the former employee. If you prefer to do this method, you must submit a ticket to IT and include the date that access can be removed.