Google Workspace Known Issues and Troubleshooting for Administrators
As a Google Workspace administrator, understanding common issues and their potential workarounds is crucial for maintaining a smooth and efficient environment for your users. This comprehensive guide compiles known issues across various Google Workspace services, providing insights and troubleshooting steps to help you address challenges effectively.
Introduction to Known Issues
Google continually works to identify and resolve product issues. A "known issue" is typically a reproducible unexpected behavior that engineers are actively working to fix. These issues are often observed globally and can generate a significant number of support cases. This guide aims to centralize information about such issues, offering administrators quick access to workarounds where available.
Domain Transfer Known Issues
When performing a Google Workspace Domain Transfer, administrators and end-users might encounter specific issues and propagation delays. Most propagation delays are expected to resolve within 24 hours,.
- Access Issues
- Transfer users might lose access to services if they are not properly set up at the transfer root organizational unit level or below.
- If policies prevent sharing outside the environment, users might lose access to content (e.g., classic Google Sites),.
- Users with domain-wide sharing access (e.g., Google Drive files) might temporarily lose access if the user and content are in different environments during the transfer,.
- Administration
- Renaming multiple non-Google accounts post-transfer might be unsuccessful,.
- Gmail
- Users might see a "Your storage is full" banner if the destination environment uses a Cloud Identity Free license when licenses are first applied. This warning typically has no impact as other licenses are applied almost immediately,.
- Google Chrome
- Chrome profiles remain associated with the source environment post-transfer. Customers need to manually re-enroll profiles on managed devices or recreate profiles on non-managed devices to fetch new policies,.
- Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, & Drawings
- Drive templates generated from shared drives might not appear in the destination environment's template gallery,.
- If the stripped transfer option for Google Drive link sharing was selected, users will lose access to documents not directly shared with them,.
- Google Chat
- Transfer users might be labeled as external, unable to start new direct messages, or add people to newly created spaces,.
- Google Groups
- Groups that restrict external messages might temporarily bounce messages from transfer users.
- Transferred groups might temporarily be missing from a transfer user's list in groups.google.com,.
- Miscellaneous
- The organization name in sharing settings for Google Docs and Calendars might take up to 72 hours to update to the destination environment's name,.
- Transferred content might take a few days to appear in Cloud Search results,.
- Contact and address autocomplete will match the directory in the destination environment,.
- End users might experience temporary interruptions of Google Workspace services during and after the transfer,.
Google Meet Hardware Known Issues
Administrators managing Google Meet hardware should be aware of specific issues related to its operation, provisioning, and peripherals.
- Admin Console Issues
- Custom Home screen not displaying: Ensure the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) service is turned on for the organizational unit where the device is located.
- Logitech device defaults (CrOS M126): Speaker/microphone sources for Logitech peripherals might show twice, requiring manual selection. Admins need to change the default microphone and speaker selection individually for each device.
- Calendar & Time Zone Issues
- Delay in assigning calendar resources: It can take up to 24 hours to assign a resource to Google Meet hardware after administrator access is granted.
- Time zone setting changes after initial setup: Some devices might revert to the default time zone.
- Workaround: Change the time zone via the Google Admin console: navigate to
Menu > Devices > Google Meet hardware > Settings, scroll to Time Zone, select the correct time zone, and click Save.
- Provisioning & Setup Issues
- New Meet hardware device setup: Devices may ship with older Chrome versions requiring an over-the-air (OTA) update. If an error screen appears after enrollment, wait a few hours for the update, then reboot.
- Meetings Issues
- Voice actions temporarily unavailable: "Hey Google" voice actions are temporarily unavailable for Acer Chromebase for Meetings and Series One Desk 27.
- Meetings created on a Chromebox don't show dial-in options:
- Workaround: Schedule the meeting through Google Calendar or create it on a personal device.
- Email addresses in meeting invitations: If a user's email username has dots (e.g.,
test.email@gmail.com), invitations sent from a Chromebox must match the exact address with dots included, or the invitee may see "This party is over".
- Peripherals Issues
- Some Samsung displays have inconsistent CEC behavior: Displays may remain powered off or in standby despite the Meet device sending a signal.
- Workaround: Manually power the display on or reboot the Meet hardware device.
- Logitech Rally Bar, Rally Bar Mini, and Rally Bar Huddle firmware updates: Intel 8th gen Kaby Lake Chromeboxes may not be able to download Rally Bar firmware packages due to memory size limitations.
- Audio settings reset after every meeting: Devices reset to Google-approved peripherals as default.
- Workaround: To use a different peripheral, set it manually before the meeting via
Settings > Audio, and unplug other peripherals.
Google Workspace General Known Issues
This section covers common issues across various Google Workspace services including Calendar, Gmail, Google Meet, Administration, Data Migration, and Collaboration.
- Calendar
- Can't change event owner for large events: For events with 200 or more guests, the event owner cannot be changed, even with write access to the calendar. Each group member counts as a guest.
- Resources in different time zones can't be booked for all-day events: When adding a room or resource to an all-day event, it's scheduled in UTC, potentially causing declines.
- Workaround: Schedule the event for 24 hours instead of selecting
All day.
- Gmail
- Video previews in Gmail don't work:
- Workaround: Users need to download the video attachment to play it.
- Inline images in autoresponder might show as broken files:
- Workaround: Host canned response images on external providers and include them from there.
- Google Meet
- People can't hear an attendee using macOS:
- Solution: Unmute the device and ensure the microphone is turned on in system settings. On macOS Mojave 10.14+, allow Chrome/Firefox access to the microphone in
System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Microphone. Restart Chrome by typing chrome://restart in the address bar.
- Meet recording requires Google Drive to be turned on: Recording requires Drive to be enabled for the user and permission to create new files on Drive.
- Solution: Administrators must turn on
Drive Docs creation and Meet recording services.
- Meet is unresponsive when using Citrix VDI:
- Solution: Reset the user's Citrix VDI session and have them log back in.
- Administration
- User-reported phishing alert may not trigger if Data regions are selected:
- Workaround: Search the Gmail messages log (
Event is: User spam classification AND Spam classification is: Phishing) or set up a custom activity rule.
- Cannot delete Google Workspace account due to active Google Cloud resources: The Admin console prevents deletion if active Google Cloud resources (projects, folders) are associated.
- Workaround: Super admins must delete all associated Google Cloud projects and folders (and Apps Script Projects, Access Context Manager policies) before deleting the Workspace account. Requires Organization Administrator, Folder Admin, and Project Deleter roles.
- Simultaneous actions in the Admin console can cause settings to be overwritten:
- Workaround: Refresh the settings page immediately before making changes, then refresh again after saving to verify new settings haven't been overwritten.
- Missing authorization check allows limited users to view all organizational units: A user with no permissions might be able to list and view all OUs.
- Data Migration & Sync (Google Cloud Directory Sync - GCDS)
- GCDS deletes a group & creates a new one:
- Situation 1: Renaming a group email address in Microsoft Active Directory (AD) after syncing to Google Workspace.
- Workaround: Do not change the group email address in AD, or manually change it in both AD and Google Workspace to match.
- Situation 2: Group email address contains special characters, synced with GCDS < 5.0.20, then GCDS is upgraded to 5.0.20+.
- Workaround: Remove special characters from AD group email address, or add them to the email address in Google Groups.
- GCDS doesn't update the configuration file when you delete a users search query: (GCDS 5.0.22)
- Workaround: Manually delete the
<usersSearchQuery> setting from the configuration file.
- GCDS doesn't correctly sync license after a user's primary email is changed: GCDS tries to add the license to the renamed user, resulting in a 412 error.
- Workaround: No direct workaround specified in the article, but indicates it fails due to incorrect license application post-rename.
- Data migration service: User migration fails with error 18017: Occurs when using Workspace as the migration source with the classic data migration service.
- Workaround: Use Gmail as the migration source, or use 2-Step Verification and an app password. Alternatively, use data migration (New).
- Data migration service: User migration fails with error 25002: Occurs with Workspace for Education Fundamentals edition.
- Workaround: In the destination account, put users into an organizational unit and set the age label to
All users are 18 or older, then retry migration.
- Reporting
- Inconsistency in security keys reporting: The number of security keys displayed in a user's security page might differ from the
Security keys enrolled column in Reporting > User Reports > Security. A phone's built-in security key mistakenly adds one to the latter.
- Duplicate View events for iOS sessions: If a Gmail iOS user opens a message and swipes left, two
View events may be stored in Email Log Search.
- Collaboration (Google Sheets)
- Google Sheet too large to be edited: Very large Google Sheets may be forced into read-only mode.
- Workaround: Individual tabs can often be copied to a new spreadsheet (
right-click tab > Copy to > New spreadsheet). Data can also be downloaded or copied/pasted into a new document.
importrange provides a way to circumvent a privacy option: importrange can bypass the "Disable options to download, print, and copy for commenters and viewers" setting.importrange counts towards the item sharing limit: importrange counts the shared sheet against the maximum sharing limit for documents.- Cell data may disappear: In rare circumstances, cell data might disappear from the current version of a sheet.
- Workaround: Recover missing data by viewing the cell's edit history.
- Education (Google Classroom)
- Can't link multiple teacher accounts in your SIS to one email address: Recreating a deleted teacher account with the old email address might still associate it with the old Student Information System (SIS) account.
- Workaround: The affected user needs a new email address for Classroom and the SIS.
- Grades duplicate in the SIS when exported from relinked class: If Classroom is unlinked and then relinked to an SIS, grades might duplicate upon export.
- Workaround: Teachers should not export a previous assignment after relinking classes.
- Archived classes are still linked to the SIS:
- Workaround: Restore the archived class in Classroom, unlink it from the SIS, then rearchive.
- Previously exported assignments cannot be reexported once deleted:
- Workaround: The teacher should recreate the assignment and re-enter the grade in Classroom.
- Teachers receive a 502 error when downloading grades for large classes: Occurs for classes with >100 stream items and >100 students.
- Students can't preview Drive files on mobile if download, print, and copy setting is disabled:
- Workaround: Teachers can change this setting on the file to allow mobile preview.
- Orphaned classes occur when a primary teacher account is deleted: Classes cannot be transferred to a co-teacher after the primary teacher's account is deleted.
Google Voice Known Issues and Limitations
Google Voice has specific known issues and limitations that administrators should be aware of.
- Voice restricts calling premium rate numbers: Voice blocks calls to premium rate numbers (e.g., U.S. 900 numbers) that charge callers added costs not related to long-distance calling.
- Workaround: Use the native dialer app on a mobile phone or another phone service for these calls.
- Changes to area codes in France: France no longer has 400+ local area codes for Google Voice; 01-05 codes are now used in mainland France, similar to 09 codes. This may impact phone number availability for specific area codes.
- Workaround: When acquiring a Voice number for a French location, select one within the 01-05 area codes.
Google Sync Known Issues with iOS
For administrators managing iOS devices with Google Sync, certain limitations and issues exist.
- Email
- Draft messages edited on iOS and in Gmail do not synchronize across accounts.
- Creating new mailboxes (labels) from within Apple Mail is not supported.
- Workaround: Create new labels from the Gmail web interface.
- "Deleting" a message from Inbox in Google Sync defaults to archiving.
- Workaround: Enable "Delete Email As Trash" for the device in Google Sync settings to truly delete messages.
- Calendar
- Comments added in the
Accept/Maybe/Decline page do not synchronize with Google Calendar.
- Attendee status changes might not sync.
- Changes to recurring events might only apply to a single selected event when saving for all events.
- Imported recurring events might not sync, or only the first occurrence synchronizes.
- Events occurring multiple times per month (e.g., "first and last Monday of each month") are not accurately represented in Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync protocol; recurring events created within Google Calendar will synchronize correctly.
- Duplicate events can be created when changes are made across daylight savings time, especially for events created in GMT and edited across the Daylight Savings Time boundary.
- General Issues
- Contact field limitations: iOS devices synchronize up to three email addresses. Phone number synchronization is limited to two home numbers, one home fax, one mobile, one pager, three work numbers (one labeled 'Company Main'), and one work fax number. Custom labels for phone numbers and other fields are not synced.
- Incomplete contact information: If a contact is copied from your domain's Directory to Google Contacts, only the email address and phone number synchronize to iOS devices. Information from connected Google Profiles does not automatically synchronize.
- iOS Reminders: iOS Reminders do not sync to Google Workspace as there is no equivalent service.
Conclusion
Being proactive in understanding and addressing known issues is a key responsibility for Google Workspace administrators. While this guide provides a detailed overview and workarounds for many common problems, Google continuously updates its services. For issues not listed here or persistent problems, contacting Google Cloud Support is always recommended. Staying informed through Google's official help documentation ensures your organization can leverage Google Workspace efficiently and effectively.
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