Changing the name of a user in our organisation

[shandb]

Our staff members inherit the email accounts of previous staff members.

I've gone through the steps to update the user in the user accounts page, and I can confirm that if I log into google as that user the new correct name is displayed.

However, when that user sends me an email I see that the name associated with the email is the old incorrect name.
For instance, any emails coming from that staff member are addressed from:
Wrong Name <sales@mybusiness.com>

Please help

[Jan-Carlos]

Hello @shandb , 

When you update the email address the former becomes an alias for the new latter.

This maybe is the cause of this situation.

You can see what cause the problem on this documentation:

https://support.google.com/a/answer/2622985?hl=en&ref_topic=14588&fl=1

[shandb]

I'm not changing the email address. I'm changing the users name. Yet, when
i recieve emails from that user the emails are showing the previous owners
name as the sender.

[shandb]

I'm not changing the email. It's the user name that i'm changing. 

However, when i recieve emails from that user the sender name is the previous owner.

[Jan-Carlos]

Maybe you previously sent an email to this user and got saved on your contacts.

Can you try to go to contacts and see if the email is saved there?

[icrew]

+1 to @Jan-Carlos : By default, Google Mail automatically saves users you correspond with to your personal contacts, which is different than the directory of all users in your Google Workspace instance, and does not get updated when a user’s name is changed in the main directory/admin console. See https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/7345608?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop for details. 

To make an old-school analogy, this is the difference between a company phone book (the main Google Directory) and each user’s personal address book (Google Contacts).

It is possible to update each user’s individual contacts with the free, open source, command-line, indispensable GAM tool. Check out:

• GAM: https://github.com/jay0lee/GAM/wiki
• GAM Advanced (a variant with a few more features): https://github.com/taers232c/GAMADV-XTD3/wiki
• and the mailing list at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/google-apps-manager

for more details. Specifically, see https://github.com/taers232c/GAMADV-XTD3/wiki/Users-People-Contacts-Profiles for what to do. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that overwriting a user’s personal contacts is a reasonably invasive thing privacy-wise. 

Hope that helps,

Ian

[naomicezanas]

Hi Ian,

I am having the same issue. Are you saying there is no way to really correct this? Why would there be an option to update the name of a user's email in Workspace, if when sending out emails it appears as the old name? How can I correct this?

Thanks

[icrew]

The GAM solution is the only way I know of to solve it for the people inside your organization. I'm not aware of any way to solve it for recipients using Gmail outside your organization. My advice would be to avoid it by not ever re-using email addresses. When Rob Jones leaves and Sally Smith takes over, I'd shut down rjones@example.com and start up ssmith@example.com. For non-person accounts, like sales@example.com, I'd have them named with a generic name like "Example LLC Sales", and accessed via delegation.

This is also good for security reasons. If Rob signed up for some third-party service, outside of the company, using rjones@example.com, you very likely don't want Sally accessing that same service without explicitly granting her access.

Hope that helps,

Ian

[cryptochrome]

To add what Ian said, Google offers special archive user licenses that are cheaper than normal Workspace licenses. With those, you can archive user accounts no longer needed for a low price and still keep their email and other data around, if needed. 

As Ian said, re-using accounts is not a good idea, regardless of whether the issue you are seeing is related to that. 

[christiannewman]

Edit the old user (by removing the email address in question) in Google Contacts. You have the old user saved in Contacts - and anything in Google Contacts will take precedence over your company's directory.

[AgTech]

This is a problem we ran into and is isolated to users accounts experiencing the issue, it is not your directory failing. The solution, (you will need to send out an email outlining the steps because it is unrealistic for your team to go through everyones accounts and do this locally).

1. From contacts.google.com search for the contact thats giving issues in order to view it.

2. From the directory contact card select the "Add to contacts" icon.

3. Reload the page and view the contact that the user just created locally on their account. If the directory contact keeps poping up after a refresh then search for it on the search bar up above.

4. Edit the contact information now that it is local to the users saved contacts to reflect the name you want. From here you can do 1 of 2 things. The users account will default to using their local contact info and will automatically use that contacts cards details for autofill. Or, delete the contact card that you just created and tested on gmail, this should force the users directory to pull the most up to date details for the contact according to what you have in workspace.

Spent a few hours trying to find  solution and no one had anything, so just went ham on the account since it was a new user and messed around until i stumbled onto this. GL and take care.