How to Change a Google Workspace User’s Name or Primary Email Address

You need to recreate any searches or retention policies based on queries that include the user’s old email address (such as  "from:[email protected]" or "to:[email protected]") to match the new email address.

When you change a user’s name and/or email address, the update behavior is different for the different types of contacts: Contacts, Directory, and Other contacts:

Contacts - Contact info, including the user’s name and email address, will not automatically update other users’ accounts. Unless updated manually by each user, the contact info will continue to show the user's old name and email address, leading to confusion. 

Directory - Contact info updates automatically. Names are updated immediately. Email addresses are updated immediately, but only if you remove the old email address as an alias.

If you keep the old email address as an alias, it will still appear in the Directory but should update to the new email address within three days.

Other contacts - Contact info, including the user’s name and email address, will not automatically update other users’ accounts.

Suppose you send an email to a contact's new address.

• In that case, the new address gets automatically added to Other contacts.
• Still, their old address also remains until you delete it, which may confuse you.

The autocomplete feature in Google services comes from contacts in Google Contacts. After you change a user's name or email address, the effect on autocomplete within your organization depends on whether you keep the old email address as an alias or not.

If you keep the old email address as an alias, both the old and new email addresses will appear as autocomplete options for other users.

If you remove the old email address as an alias, it won’t appear as an autocomplete option for other users unless they have it in their Contacts or Other contacts.

Events created before the user’s email address is changed will continue showing the old address, while events made after the change display the new email address.

Items owned by the user become owned by the new username.

Items shared with the user automatically change to the new username and email address.

The user's permissions on shared items remain the same.

Chats that occurred before the user’s email address gets changed will continue showing the old email. Chat that occur after the change display the new email address. This is important if you try to find chats using Gmail or Vault.

Other users who chatted with the updated user will see the new username in their chat lists and will still be able to chat.

The effects depend on the app the user uses with IMAP.

If the app lets the user update their login for the account, access to Google Workspace can resume.

If the app doesn't allow login changes, the user will need to delete their old app profile and add a new one with the new name.

If you update a user’s email address, the user must create a new profile and sync everything from scratch.

The updated user’s work profile and managed apps get removed.

The user must create a new work profile with their new username and reinstall the managed apps.

Any user you update will have to reinstall all Marketplace or App Engine apps that use OAuth or OpenID. If an app saves data based on the domain name or the user's email address, that data is lost after the change.

Suppose a Google Play Developer account is associated with a user account name you want to move to a new domain. In that case, the Developer account will get orphaned after making the change. 

To maintain access to the apps in the previous Google Play Developer account, you need to create a new Google Play Developer account https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/6112435 using your new user account name and request an applications transfer https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/6230247?visit_id=637501971003220304-2682417052&rd=1 for apps in the previous account.