Using Google Apps for domains with an email address that has an existing Google account

Question

I have just migrated a domain name, lets call it domain-x.co.uk to Google Apps. A user at this domain had a pre-existing Google login, primarily for Google docs, i.e. user1@domain-x.co.uk.

I've just created said user as a matching email address and issued them with the associated password. They've attempted to login to Google Docs using that username and password but it's showing that they have no documents.

What should/could I do to retrieve the documents?

Answer 1

I think the easiest way (not preferable I know) is to just give your domain permission to all your docs you need access to.

either that or just download them and re upload them.

I do not know of a easy way to "transfer" them.

Answer 2

When user1@domain-x.co.uk has a pre-existing Google Docs account, there is no way to easily access that account or migrate documents from that account to the one provided by Google Apps for Domains when a corresponding account for user1@domain-x.co.uk is created within Google Apps.

The solution was to:

1. Add a nickname to the account for user1@domain-x.co.uk of user1-alternate (anything could be specified here.
2. Remove the association between the user1@domain-x.co.uk email address and their account.
3. Instruct the owner of user1@domain-x.co.uk to login to their Google Docs account and change the primary email address (thus their login) to one outside of domain-x.co.uk.
4. Revert steps 1 and 2 to re-link the original email address.

This allowed the user to disassociate their Google Docs account from their Google Apps for domains email identity.