Since 5 October 2026, deleting a Google Workspace user also deletes every secondary calendar that person owned. Google's announcement puts it in one line: "when a user account is deleted, any secondary calendars owned by that user will be deleted as well". Suspend the user instead, and those calendars are suspended too. The team leave calendar someone set up in 2021, the on-call rota, the shared calendar for a client project: if the person who created it leaves and IT removes the account the usual way, the calendar and its events go with them.
None of this came out of nowhere. The first date was 27 April 2026, and in March Google moved enforcement for business accounts to 5 October 2026 so admins could get a new transfer API in place. The October rollout is listed as an "extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility)", so some domains are only meeting it now. If your offboarding checklist predates this year, it is wrong in one specific place. Below: what changed, where to look in the Admin console, and what it costs a 25-person and a 100-person company to get it wrong.
What changed on 5 October
A secondary calendar is any calendar a user creates on top of their own primary one. Teams use them for holidays, shift rotas, release dates and shared deadlines. Until this year those calendars could outlive their creator, because Google ran a background job that "auto-assigns ownership to a user who has 'Make changes and manage sharing' access" whenever a calendar was orphaned. That job stopped on 5 October 2026.
Three rules now apply, all taken from Google's own documentation:
- Deleting the owner deletes the calendar and all its events. Google's admin help says this "includes group calendars and Classroom calendars".
- Once the owner is deleted, "you also won't be able to make any additional transfers". There is no rescue step afterwards.
- Suspending the owner suspends their secondary calendars as well, which is how primary calendars already behaved.
Ownership can only move inside your organization. Google states that "ownership transfers are restricted to users in the same domain", although you can still share a calendar with outsiders if your policies allow it.
Who should care
Any company on Workspace where staff create shared calendars. The change applies to all Google Workspace customers and Workspace Individual subscribers, so no edition is exempt. The risk is highest where one person created a calendar that quietly became team infrastructure: the office manager's leave calendar, a sales lead's demo calendar, the release calendar a developer made in their first week. Companies with steady turnover, or that clean up old accounts in batches once a quarter, will hit it first.
What breaks in practice
The obvious failure is a calendar vanishing for everyone subscribed to it. The less obvious ones catch experienced admins:
- The normal "transfer data" step when deleting a user does not save these calendars. Google's help says that when you transfer a user's primary calendar events, "Secondary calendars and their events don't transfer".
- Primary-calendar transfers skip things too. On the same page: all private events are cancelled, past events don't transfer, and a user on litigation hold has no events transferred at all.
- Suspending a leaver "just to be safe" now blocks their calendars and still costs a full license. More on that below.
- Meetings the leaver organized keep holding rooms. Without action, Google warns, "the events block other users' calendars and can block meeting rooms and resources".
What to check in the Admin console
Every path here comes from Google's Calendar admin help. You need the Calendar administrator privilege, and Manage Calendars for secondary calendar transfers.
1. Move the leaver's secondary calendars first
Go to Menu > Apps > Google Workspace > Calendar > Event and Secondary calendar management > Secondary calendar transfer. Enter the From user and the To user, then click Transfer Secondary Calendars. Calendars move one at a time, so someone with a dozen of them takes a while. Let it finish before you touch the account.
2. Transfer or release their primary-calendar events
In the same section, open Event and Secondary calendar management > Events transfer, enter the leaver's username, and either transfer future events to a colleague or release booked resources. Google says the job starts about 10 minutes later and can run for 15 minutes.
3. List the accounts that are suspended today
Go to Menu > Directory > Users, click Add a filter, then User status > Suspended (Google's steps). Each result is a person whose secondary calendars are now suspended, and a license you still pay for in full. Run step 1 on each of those accounts before deleting any of them.
4. Decide what happens to deleted users' future events
Under Event and Secondary calendar management, the box Silently cancel future events of deleted users cancels a deleted user's future events 21 days after deletion. It is not retroactive. It tidies up stale meetings; it does not save any calendar.
5. Script it if you have more than a handful of users
The API that caused the six-month delay now exists. Google's Calendar API release notes describe the Calendars.transferOwnership method for moving individual secondary calendars between users in the same organization. A CalendarList filter for organization-owned calendars, combined with the Admin SDK users list and the dataOwner field, lets you build an inventory of who owns what before anyone hands in their notice.
An offboarding order that keeps calendars
- While the leaver still works there, ask them to transfer the calendars they know about from Calendar settings.
- Run the secondary calendar transfer in the Admin console to catch the ones they forgot.
- Transfer or release primary-calendar events and room bookings.
- Handle Drive files and Gmail as you do today, from the delete dialog under Directory > Users.
- Then archive or delete the account. Don't leave it suspended.
Our own preference goes one step further: personal accounts should not own team calendars at all. Pick one durable owner, such as a shared IT admin account, and transfer every new team calendar to it on the day it is created. Offboarding then has nothing to rescue.
What getting it wrong costs
The tempting workaround is to never delete a leaver and simply suspend them. Google is blunt that this saves nothing: "Suspended accounts are still charged at the same rate as active accounts on both the Annual billing plan and the Flexible plan." Since 5 October it no longer keeps their calendars usable either.
The table uses Business Standard at its list price of $14 per user per month and the Business Standard Archived User license at $3, which on the Flexible Plan is charged in your next monthly payment. The turnover figures are illustrative, not survey data: three leavers a year at a 25-person company, twelve at a 100-person company, each kept for 12 months.
| Scenario | 25 users | 100 users |
|---|---|---|
| Annual license bill (users × $14 × 12) | 25 × 14 × 12 = $4,200 | 100 × 14 × 12 = $16,800 |
| Leavers kept suspended for 12 months | 3 × 14 × 12 = $504 | 12 × 14 × 12 = $2,016 |
| Same leavers archived instead | 3 × 3 × 12 = $108 | 12 × 3 × 12 = $432 |
| Calendars transferred, account deleted | $0 extra | $0 extra |
In both companies the suspended leavers add 12% to the year's bill ($504 / $4,200 and $2,016 / $16,800). Archiving instead saves $396 and $1,584 a year ($504 - $108 and $2,016 - $432). Two caveats. On the Annual Plan, "your bill stays the same even if you delete a user" until renewal, so the saving arrives at your next commitment. And Google's October post covers deletion and suspension but says nothing about archived users' secondary calendars, so transfer first whichever route you take. The half-price offer running from 16 November 2026 is for new customers only and doesn't change these numbers for an existing tenant.
If you are reviewing your email platform anyway
This is a small change with a sharp edge, and Google gave plenty of notice. The lesson travels well beyond Google: shared resources need an owner who isn't a person likely to leave. Microsoft 365 tenants have their own deadline to deal with this quarter, covered in our guide to the EWS and SMTP Basic Auth shutdown. If the licensing table above made you wince, our FanMail vs Google Workspace vs Zoho Mail comparison lays out per-user costs side by side, and companies in the Emirates should read our note on UAE data protection rules for email hosting before moving any mailboxes.
FAQ
We deleted a user before reading this. Can we get their calendars back?
Google lets admins restore a deleted user within 20 days, so restore at once and check. But the Calendar help says that after an owner is deleted no additional transfers are possible, and Google does not promise the calendars return. Plan as if they are gone.
Does this change how primary calendars work?
No. Google says the new behavior "matches the behavior of primary calendars". Primary calendars already went away with their owner; secondary calendars now do the same.
Can we hand a calendar to a contractor outside our domain?
Not as owner. Transfers are restricted to users in the same domain. You can still give an outside user "Make changes and manage sharing" access if your sharing policy allows it.
Is there an admin setting to switch this off?
Google's announcement lists none. The only admin actions it names are transfers in the Admin console or through the Calendar API.
Is suspending a leaver still a safe way to keep their data?
Their data isn't deleted, but their secondary calendars are now suspended and the account is billed at the full rate. An Archived User license keeps the data for less; transfer calendars before archiving anyway.
Sources: Google Workspace Updates posts of 5 October 2026, 30 March 2026 and 18 June 2026; Google Workspace Admin Help on transferring events and secondary calendars, suspending users, archiving users, add-on pricing, Archived User licenses, billing for suspended users, preserving former employee data and deleting users; Google Calendar API release notes; Google Workspace pricing, checked 2 November 2026.
