Fixing "www" prefix in Google Workspace email addresses

[justinthemaking]

Hi there folks,

I am in the process of helping someone migrate their existing email from cPanel to Google Workspace.

We performed the initial setup of the Google Workspace account and got most of the details sorted out without issue.

However, after we preformed domain verification and activated Gmail, we noticed that the domain ending of all the user email addresses were prefixed with "www". As in: we had "user@www.example.com" as the email address, rather than "user@example.com".

Furthermore, when trying to change the Primary Domain, we cannot add a secondary domain without having the "www" in front of it.

In looking up the DNS records / zone file, there was no CNAME record for "www" that might have caused a mixup.

We were able to get one of the accounts to start the migration process, but the others are experiencing problems with even logging in. This might be a separate, unrelated issue.

Has anyone seen something like this happen?

Other than cancelling the trial and restarting the process from scratch, I would be interested to know if how we can go about solving this.

Any insight on this would be of course greatly appreciated.

Thanks very much!

- Justin

[Jan-Carlos]

Hello!

I believe that was a mistake when you add your domain name on the setup:

When i try to add just the domain without the "www" it works as expected.

I just bought a domain to test and the user were created without the "www".

I believe you will have to delete the panel and create a new one or you can try to add a secondary domain and change the primary domain.

[justinthemaking]

Thanks Jan-Carlos!

Just to clarify, when you say "delete the panel", do you mean to delete "unverify" the domain, delete the Workspace account, and then try signing up again?

Regarding adding the secondary domain:
We are still technically within the 14-day free trial period. Before we do this, I do have a question: if we were to add another secondary domain (that has already been purchased, say one of my own for testing), is there a separate or additional charge for this (see screenshot below)? Or would it still be free as part of the trial? I do not want them to be charged just for trying to add a secondary domain as a workaround.

Thanks again for your help.

[Jan-Carlos · Accepted solution]

Hello!

This is good, if your on the first steps of your trial it will be much easier to delete the panel and start all over again.

You can delete your entire panel and recreate it again immediately.

Your trial will start again without a problem.

To delete, you just need to go to admin console > Account settings > Account management > Delete Account.

I delete my panels all the time to renew the trials and do some tests.

Hope it helps.

[justinthemaking]

It does! Thank you!

One last question for you: do we need to undo the verification for their domain before we delete the account? If so, how can we go about this?

Since we would be deleting the account and signing up again for the exact same domain name (just trying to do it without Google adding "www" at the verification step), my thinking is that if we leave that domain verified, it can't be reclaimed, and we would have an even bigger issue. 😉

[Jan-Carlos]

There's no problem to delete without verifying.

The moment the panel is deleted all the info is gone.

After you delete it will become available to recreate again as it was the first time.

[justinthemaking]

Hi Jan-Carlos,

Just an update/question for you (and the rest of the community):

Per the first guided setup process, we did set up billing and verified the domain at the beginning. I think we may have had a slight miscommunication/misunderstanding there.

According to Google's help doc on cancelling the trial, since we have done both of these things, would this mean we are not able to simply delete the account? Does this also mean that we cannot reactivate the trial, as you had initially mentioned?

Just want to be sure.

Thanks again!

[Jan-Carlos]

You can delete your account whenever you want.

After the deletion, Google will treat your domain as it was your first time on Google Workspace.

You can start the trials without a problem.