Manage email storage with auto delete settings

As a Google Workspace administrator, you can use the Email and chat auto-deletion setting to manage message storage for people in your organization. You can set the number of days that messages stay in a user's mailbox, and create settings that:

• Move messages to trash or delete them permanently when the storage periods expire.
• Keep messages that have specific labels.
• Delete messages automatically, or let your users manage message deletion.

The Email and chat auto-deletion setting is for Gmail and Classic Hangouts (deprecated) message storage only. To manage Google Chat message storage, visit Automatically delete Chat messages for your organization.

Manage message storage with Vault

If you need auto delete for all accounts and message, for example for legal or compliance purposes, use Google Vault instead of the  Email and chat auto-deletion setting. Google recommends using either the auto-deletion setting or Vault to manage message retention, but not both. Learn more on the Vault retention FAQ page.

How auto-delete settings are applied

This section describes how messages are managed with the Email and chat auto-deletion setting:

The setting applies to email messages in the user's inbox, to archived messages, and to messages added with the Gmail API.

When at least one message in a conversation is retained based on the setting, all messages in the conversation are retained. This happens whether Conversation view is on or off.

The setting doesn't apply to messages in the Trash folder. Messages in the Trash are permanently deleted after 30 days. 

The setting is regularly applied to messages on a scheduled basis. So, when a storage period ends, messages might not be removed immediately. They're removed the next time the setting is applied.

To determine when to delete messages, the setting uses the day and time when Gmail received the message. For messages migrated to Gmail or received by Gmail from a POP or IMAP mailbox, the setting uses the Date: header or the IMAP Internal Date attribute.

Turn on message auto-deletion

1. Sign in to your Google Admin console.

   Sign in using your administrator account (does not end in @gmail.com).

2. In the Admin console, go to Menu  AppsGoogle WorkspaceGmailCompliance.
3. On the left, select your top-level organization, typically your domain.
4. Scroll to the Email and chat auto-deletion setting and choose Automatically delete email and chat messages older than the specified number of days.
5. Enter the number of days you want to store messages. For example, enter 45 to delete messages older than 45 days. The minimum is 30.
6. Under How to handle automatically-deleted messages, choose an option to for deleted messages:
   • Move messages to the Trash folder. Messages stay in the trash for 30 more days before they're deleted. This extra time lets you retrieve any messages deleted by mistake.
   • Delete messages permanently: Messages bypass the trash, and are deleted permanently after the specified number of days. You can't retrieve permanently deleted messages.

7. (Optional) To exclude messages with specific labels from auto-deletion, enter a comma-separated list of the label names under Do not automatically delete messages with the following labels. Communicate these labels to people in your organization so they can create the same labels for messages they want to keep. Learn how to Create labels to organize Gmail.

8. At the bottom of the page, click Save. 

Changes can take up to 24 hours but typically happen more quickly. Learn more