I'm a small business owner using Google Workspace Business Starter on the Annual Plan.

A few days ago I created two temporary users just to test Workspace. TBH, I didn't know that adding users on an Annual Plan permanently increases the annual license commitment.

I deleted the accounts after I received the invoice today, but my subscription now shows:

• 3 licenses total
• 1 assigned
• 2 available

I contacted Google Workspace Support hoping they could review it as a one-time mistake.

The frustrating part wasn't even the policy itself, I understand Annual Plans have commitment rules. The frustrating part was that support kept explaining the published policy instead of answering my actual question: Can this be reviewed as a one-time courtesy exception?

For a small business, paying over $200 CAD for two unused licenses created during a few minutes of testing is a painful mistake.

Has anyone here successfully received a courtesy adjustment or escalation from Google Billing in a similar situation? If so, how did you get your case reviewed?

I have folders my Drive that I want to keep private from team members who have access to the same drive/login. Is there a way to add a password to specific folders or would I need to create that folder in a separate account altogether?

I wanted to know if it's possible to open the meeting link in 2 different tabs, and then join the same meeting from 2 separate accounts from the different tabs.

Hi,

My partner and I just launched a small business and set up Google Workspace with 2 users (xxx@ and yyy@). We created a Google Group (info@ourdomain.com) so we both receive emails sent to our main contact address.

The issue: when she replies to a client from her account using info@ as the sender, I don't see her reply in my account. We each have our own independent mailbox and there's no sync between us — if she deletes or reads an email, I still see it as unread on my end.

What I had in mind is that we should both see all emails sent and received via info@, regardless of who handled them, and we avoid duplicate replies to clients more easily.

We enabled "Collaborative Inbox" in Google Groups.

What's the usual setup for a small 2-person team sharing a contact email? Is there a cleaner solution within Google Workspace, or should we look at a third-party tool? Should we have gotten a single user instead of two ?

Thanks

Hi there, i set up Claude Cowork to summarize my unread emails on gmail few times a day. I had wanted it to summarize any attachments (usually excel, word or pdf files) in the summary, but it’s always returning some sort of error stating inability to read and summarize attachments. Does anyone have any idea what might be causing this? I read the gmail connector is supposed to be able to read attachments.

Additionally, I wanted Claude to Whatsapp me the summary. Is this possible? I’ve seen some videos on TikTok of people doing this but cant seem to find details on how to make this work?

Thanks!

Hi all,

I'm a Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals (the free version) admin at a school. Over the last 1–2 months, our teachers and students have been reporting that Gemini Pro often shows a "heavy load" message and then automatically switches to a less capable model.

This seems to be happening much more frequently than before, and the quality difference is noticeable.

Has anyone else experienced this with Education accounts recently? Is this a known capacity issue, or is there something we should check on the admin side?

Thanks!

PS we have also noticed that if Gemini 3.1 Pro model is selected, it often sort of gets stuck preparing its answer and the only thing that helps is to either manually switch to 3.5 Thinking model and ask the same question once more or to repeatedly reload the page (F5) and try again with the Pro model. Unfortunately the thinking model's limits seem to be pretty low

Hi,

Somebody I work with is trying to amalgamate all her calendars to make organisation easier. These are mostly Google Cals and we have done that bit fine. But she also has a work calendar which is Microsoft Outlook and aligned with her .gov.uk email address. Is there any way to sync this with her Google Cal?

She did something from that side and we've received a "You're invited to share this calendar" email at the gmail address, which includes attachments ('noname' and 'sharing_metadata.xml')... but when I try to import into Google Cal it fails and says "Imported 0 out of 114 events. Could not upload your events because you do not have sufficient..."

Grateful for any suggestions :)

Think workspace can automate sending a reply to a lead right?

Hey everyone, I've been dealing with a strange Google Drive issue and hoping someone here has encountered something similar.

I tried sharing a Google Drive folder from one of my accounts to another, adding it as an Editor. When I open it while signed in with the receiving account, the folder appears completely empty. But when I access it through the public link (the folder is also set to "Anyone with the link" can view), the files show up just fine.

What makes it weirder is that I tested sharing the folder with a third email address, and that account had no issues at all. It could see the folder and all the files in it, and also received the share notification email. The receiving account, on the other hand, never received any notification emails even though the "Notify people" option was enabled every time. I've checked the Spam folder too, nothing there.

I've tried removing and re-adding the receiving account as an Editor multiple times but the problem keeps coming back. I'm on the free tier of Google Drive.

Troubleshooting steps I've already tried:

• Cleared browser cache and cookies
• Tried Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Brave on Windows
• Tried incognito mode
• Checked for unintended Google account switching

This is the first time I've run into something like this with any Google service. Has anyone experienced this or knows what might be causing it?

On multiple domains the Google Groups page seems to have lost the ability to have messages marked as read (by de-bolding the subject lines).

Has anyone else experienced this?

I've set up cells, but when I copy and paste the images, I need them to be arranged horizontally, but the cells are putting them vertically. This will take ages.

How are you all handling team engagement and remote culture without leaving the Google Workspace ecosystem?

I recently had to figure out how to keep our remote team connected. People were feeling pretty isolated, and I noticed morale dipping because we barely interacted outside of Docs and Meet. I wanted to build a system that didn't require forcing people onto yet another platform.

Here is what I've been trying out so far:

• Setting up dedicated Google Chat spaces just for non-work chatter. I made specific ones for things like cooking and pets, and I try to drop a random conversation starter in there once a week to keep it active.
• Using Google Forms for a quick monthly pulse check. I keep it to just three simple text fields so it feels less like a corporate survey and more like a casual check-in.
• Tracking team milestones. I initially tried putting everyone's birthdays and work anniversaries on a shared Google Calendar. It worked okay but required a lot of manual nudging to get people to say happy birthday. I eventually added Tribe to our Google Chat. It automates the milestone celebrations and handles peer kudos for me.
• Scheduling optional 15-minute coffee chats via Google Meet. I just pair up random people who don't usually work together and send a calendar invite.

This is just the setup I've been testing for the last few months, so it's definitely a work in progress and subject to change.

What Workspace tricks or Chat integrations are you using to keep remote teams connected?

University alumni Google account being sunset June 30, and I can't export shared files on Google Drive. Anyone found a way to automate this?

My university alumni Google account is being shut down June 30 and I'm trying to save everything before it's gone. I've already:

• Set up Google Drive mirror mode to an external hard drive (Seagate 2TB)
• Tried Google Takeout but it doesn't include files shared with me by others
• Mirror mode is skipping shared folders (showing sync errors on those specifically)

The problem is I have a ton of photos that friends/family shared with me through Google Drive in various folders that I need to save. I can see them fine in the Drive web UI but they won't sync locally or export via Takeout.

Any automated solutions? Manual folder-by-folder download is going to take forever given the volume.

Thanks

If I used takeout to transfer school files to my personal drive, once my school access is taken away, will I have any issues opening the files on my personal account? When I googled it, it said through takeout it’s creating new files basically so I don’t have to worry about the ownership being originally on my school account because it will be deleted when I switch districts. Curious if anyone in here has done this and it worked the way it’s saying it should. I’m just having anxiety that it won’t work in a few weeks. Thank you 😊

I'm hoping the hivemind here can help me understand a situation i've not seen before, trying to help out a client this afternoon.

They have a Google Workspace account for their one person business, which has a user in it which is theirname@theirdomain.com

They also have a gmail address which is theirname@gmail.com

This was all set up several years ago, before my involvement. And the business it was set up for has now stopped trading. They have a new business, and had added the domain for that new business as a Secondary Domain on the account and so also receive email to: theirname@newdomain.com

We can't switch the secondary domain to be the primary domain, I think because the account was originally purchased via Squarespace and so for *reasons* google won't let it be changed. Even though the Squarespace account was shutdown ages ago.

BUT, here's the thing that has me confused, and I may just be missing something obvious....

The client's gmail.com email address is somehow connected to the theirdomain.com GWS account.

Email sent to the gmail.com email address lands in the GWS accounts inbox and opening an incognito window and logging into the gmail.com email account lands you in the GWS accounts inbox.

Everything i'm reading online says this shouldn't be possible and that the personal free GMail service is totally separate to GWS. But somehow this has happened.

I suspect I know the answer to the next question, but is there ANY way of divorcing the GMail.com address and ideally keeping its historic email...and just how did this happen in the first place?

The client would ideally like to end up with their free GMail back for personal use and a new Workspace account for newdomain.com

Has anyone seen anything like this before?

https://preview.redd.it/qnj92prf6a9h1.png?width=1502&format=png&auto=webp&s=b2088da33a3f6f697bd63bc1f75eee117b852628

I already have google workspace smart features off, yet I keep on getting this pop up literally every time I open gmail and it's making me a little insane, is there a way to close it and it *stay* closed?