How to set an out of office for an employee who left

By Patronum

September 07, 2026

Read Time: 4 mins

How to set an out of office for an employee who left image

Why this matters more than it looks
Route 1: Use the Gmail API or GAM
Route 2: Sign in as the user (fallback only)
Route 3: Answer from a Google Group
Route 4: Route the mail instead
Three templates you can paste
Where people get this wrong
Frequently asked questions
Retire the mailbox, keep the mail
Sources

Google Workspace gives a super admin no button to switch on another person’s vacation responder. Four routes work: the Gmail API or GAM, an approved break-glass sign-in as the user, a Google Group at the old address, or a recipient address map. Set the reply before you suspend or archive the account.

Why this matters more than it looks

Customers write to someone who left, hear nothing, and assume you ignored them. So teams keep the account licensed, set an auto-reply, and forget. Six months on you’re paying for a dead mailbox.

Route	Best for	Main catch
Gmail API or GAM	Any number of leavers, and the safest	Domain-wide delegation, `gmail.settings.basic` scope
Break-glass sign-in as the user	A one-off, with no API access	Password reset, 2-Step Verification, controls to restore
Google Group auto reply	An address answering forever	Only after the account is deleted or renamed
Recipient address map or routing	Handover, not a true responder	Redirects mail; the sender is told nothing

Set this before suspension, archive or delete, where possible. Google states an archived user “Can’t receive new email and calendar invitations,” so an archived account’s responder has nothing to answer. Once the account is gone, only routes 3 and 4 still work.

Route 1: Use the Gmail API or GAM

Lead with this one. It avoids password resets and signing in as the user. Per the Gmail API reference, users.settings.updateVacation “Updates vacation responder settings,” takes any user’s email address as the userId, and needs the gmail.settings.basic scope. GAM wraps it: gam <UserTypeEntity> vacation [<Boolean>] [subject <String>], plus optional start and end dates. No credential handling, and it scripts across a leaver list.

Only when you have no API access, and treat it as break-glass. Use an approved admin process, log it, and restore security controls immediately afterward.

In the Google Admin console, open Menu > Directory > Users, open the user, click Reset password.
Then Security > Sign in cookies > Reset. Google notes the user is then “signed out of all active sessions.”
Sign in as the user in a private window under that process. Change 2-Step Verification only through the same process, and never leave it off.
In Gmail, open Settings > See all settings > General and turn on Vacation responder. It “starts at 12:00 AM on the start date and ends at 11:59 PM on the end date.”
Sign out, reset the password again, and put every control you touched back the same day.

Route 3: Answer from a Google Group

Once the account is deleted or renamed, create a Google Group at the old address. Under Group settings > Email options, Google’s Workspace Learning Center documents an Auto replies section: “You can set up separate auto replies for internal and external members and non-members.” So customers and colleagues get different messages.

Route 4: Route the mail instead

If the goal is handover rather than a true vacation responder, move the mail instead. Google’s Admin Help documents a recipient address map at Apps > Google Workspace > Gmail > Routing > Email forwarding using recipient address map, which redirects or forwards mail sent to one person to other recipients, and notes they “appear to come directly from the original sender.” Pick redirect, and “messages aren’t delivered to the original recipient.”

Default routing at Menu > Apps > Google Workspace > Gmail > Default routing goes further. Its Change envelope recipient action makes messages “bypass the original recipient’s mailbox and go to the new recipient,” and you can limit the rule to non-recognized addresses, which Google defines to include suspended users and verified-domain addresses with no account behind them. So routing survives suspension or deletion.

Routing tells the sender nothing, so pair it with a group auto reply if they need to hear back.

Three templates you can paste

Neutral: [Name] no longer works at [Company]. This mailbox isn’t forwarded. Please write to [Team] at [address].
Named replacement: [Name] has left [Company]. [Replacement] now covers this, at [address].
Closing soon: [Name] has left [Company]. This address closes on [date]. Please use [address].

Where people get this wrong

Keeping the account licensed for months just so the reply keeps working. Admins reach for a Google Archived User license, hit the no-new-mail limit above, and quietly revert. License fees stay necessary anyway, “including AU licenses.”

The handover is the point at which the mailbox stops needing to exist. Once the responder has run its course and the address sits on a group or a routing rule, nothing is still arriving that a live account has to catch. That’s the moment to retire it, not six months later. Patronum Archive extracts “all data retained in Google Vault, including deleted emails held under a retention or hold policy,” into your own Google Cloud Storage bucket in Mbox RFC 4155 format, searchable by name, date or keyword, with the option to “Restore entire mailbox or individual items.” It’s “typically triggered by offboarding policies,” so the handover and the retirement happen in one pass instead of the second one never happening.

Forwarding a leaver’s mail to a colleague and never turning it off. A year later a manager is getting payroll notices and nobody remembers approving it. Give every route an end date.

Frequently asked questions

Can an admin set an out of office for another user from the Admin console?

No. Google documents the vacation responder only as a per-user Gmail setting. The supported route for admins is the Gmail API method users.settings.updateVacation, or GAM, which wraps it.

Will the auto-reply still work if I archive the user?

No. Google states an archived user “Can’t receive new email and calendar invitations,” so nothing arrives to answer. Set it before you archive, then move the address to a group or routing rule.

Can I just forward the leaver’s mail instead?

You can, but forwarding never answers the sender, and Google caps auto-forwarding at 10,000 messages per day and 40 filters. A recipient address map is the cleaner version.

Should I delete the account once the reply is set?

Not the same afternoon. Google restores a deleted account “for up to 20 days,” and on Annual or Fixed-Term plans that needs another license.

Retire the mailbox, keep the mail

Setting the reply is the easy half. Retiring the account is the hard half. Patronum runs both as one policy. See the offboarding checklist and offboarding automation.