Forward a suspended Google account's mail

Question

In my organization, I've suspended 2 users who have quit.

I'm trying to accomplish 3 things:

• Block them from logging in
• Retain a copy of all of their old emails, in case anything critical is needed
• Forward any new email sent to their addresses to a different email

If I suspend them, it accomplishes the first 2 bullets but then forwarding and aliases don't work ("the alias is in use")

Is there some other way to forward the mail for a suspended account? Or is my best bet simply to change the passwords on the accounts and ensure that any recovery contact info is also reset.

I guess I could also export all of their old email but I'd rather keep it in the Gmail interface.

Answer 1

For such a use case, global email forwarding can be used. To apply this:

• Login to https://admin.google.com/
• go to Apps > Google Workspace > GMail > Routing (https://admin.google.com/ac/apps/gmail/routing)
• Scroll down to "Email forwarding using recipient address map"

Answer 2

I ended up just changing their password, removing their recovery phone number and email, making sure that 2FA was disabled, and removing any devices that they had linked to the account.

As far as I know that has completely locked them out of the account including resetting/recovering the new password.

Then I logged into their email and setup forwarding to the new email address.

This seems to be the only solution at the moment.