Move Google Groups to Another Organization Securely

In Google Workspace, a group is created to perform collaborative communication. It allows you to create mailing lists, discussion forums, and shared inboxes for the teams. By using this, you can send emails to a group of email addresses instead of sending individual emails to members. Google Groups plays a huge role in business internal discussions, announcements, and project updates. So, it helps the team to simplify the communication and maintain collaboration across an organization.

There are several situations where one has to move Google Groups to another organization. Which I have explained in this section.

Scenarios Where You Need to Transfer Google Groups

• Two companies merging or one acquiring another. In this situation, they also have to move their Google Workspace data, including the Google Groups.
• Large organizations frequently reorganize or restructure their departments. In that case, moving your Google groups from one department to another is needed.
• In an organization, multiple subsidiaries or regional offices are operating under separate G Suite domains. To simplify the IT operation and communication, administrators may migrate the Groups into the central domain.
• If your corporation is splitting or a department becomes an independent entity. Then, the admin has to move the Google Groups to a new account to retain the discussions.
• Industries have strict governance or regulatory policies. So, for compliance, they have to move the Groups to ensure data privacy, better access control, and adherence to company policies.

So, from the perspective of companies, these are the reasons to move the Google Groups. If you are curious what type of Google Groups contain. I have mentioned them below.

What Data Do Google Groups Contain?

• Group email and conversation history
• Membership details like owners, managers, and members.
• Permissions and access controls.
• Group settings such as posting permissions, visibility, etc.
• Files shared through group conversations, including Drive links and attachments.

So, when moving Google Groups to another organization. You are also migrating this data. So, now let's see how you can do this.

How to Move Google Groups to Another Organization?

Unfortunately, Google doesn't have a direct option to transfer your Google Group from one domain to another. But there is an indirect approach you can use. One of them is to manually recreate each Google Group in your destination G Suite account. Below are the steps to do it.

1. Go to your destination, Google Admin Console, and log in using your admin account. 
2. Now, click on Google Groups and then the Create Group option.
3. Type the same group name, email address, and description as mentioned in the source domain.
4. Select the group type, like Email list, Collaboration inbox, etc.
5. Modify the posting permissions, visibility options, and moderation rules, which are similar to the old group's configuration.
6. Export a list of current members from the old group. Use a CSV file to export them.
7. Import the member list, or you can add them manually in the new organization.
8. Assign the roles to the people same way as the old group.

This is the way to get your contact list from old organization to another. This way, you are creating a new Google Group in your destination domain and exporting the list of contacts from the old Group. If you want to transfer the Group data. Then, i have methods that you can use.

Use Google Takeout to Migrate Google Group

Takeout is a free option to move your group data by downloading it and then import it to the new organization.

1. Go to the Google Takeout web page. Make sure it is login to your source domain.
2. Click on the Deselect All button. Scroll down to Groups option. Select the check box next to Groups.
3. Move your mouse pointer to the bottom of the screen and press Next Step button.
4. Select the destination, file type and size. Then, click on the Export optin.
5. It will export your data in ZIP format. Extract the files and upload to Google Group.

Other than this, there is another method that you can use to migrate bulk groups data to anotehr domain.

Move Google Groups to Another Organization Professionally

To migrate bulk Group data, you can use SysTools Software Google Workspace to Google Workspace Migration Software. This tool is created to easily migrate your Google Groups data from one domain to another without any issues. Here, you can transfer all types of data including emails, contacts, calendars, and documents. Downlaod the software in your Windows desktop and start migrating your data.

Steps to Use the Software

1. First of all, download the software and run it.
2. Click on G Suite and G Suite as the source and destination.
3. Select the Document option and enable the option to transfer the permission.
4. You can move the selected file by clicking the date filter option. After that, select the Next button.
5. Add the details of your source Google account, like Admin Email, Service Account, and Certificate File. Press the Validate button to ensure the permission.
6. Provide the credentials of your destination account on Admin Email, Service Account, and Certificate File. Hit the Validate button.
7. Now, add your user, either by choosing Fetch User to automatically fetch the user.
8. Or choose Import User for manually adding. Before manually adding the user, click on the Template CSV file, add the User source and destination IDs, and submit to the tool.
9. You can set the priority on the user account and click on the Start Migration button.

To Conclude

In this article, I have explained how you can move Google Groups to another organization. Here, I have mentioned the data that is contained in the Google Groups and two methods to migrate them. Directly migrating the groups to another domain is not possible, but I have explained an indirect procedure where you create a new group in the destination domain and mve your contact list to the new group.