Google Workspace: Restore User Data

Who can use this feature

Anyone with these permissions: Restore users

A user restore brings back a person’s whole working set, both files and mail, in one job. When someone’s My Drive and mailbox are emptied together, such as when a user account is wiped or a departing employee’s data is cleared too early, that job brings both back from a snapshot.

This article explains how to restore a Google Workspace user’s My Drive files and Gmail messages together, using the Eon console.

A restore job covers one user, so recovering several people means running the job once for each of them.

Eon restores a user’s data to that same user, and nothing is overwritten:

Drive files: Eon restores them into a new folder in the user’s own My Drive, so the files already there aren’t touched.
Gmail messages: Eon restores them into the user’s own mailbox, alongside the mail that’s already there.

Restore a user

You can find backed-up users and start a restore from the SaaS inventory page in the Eon console.

Before you start

Before you restore a user, make sure a restore workspace is connected for the source workspace the user was backed up from. For instructions, see Google Workspace: Connect Restore Workspaces.

Select the user and the snapshot to restore

In your SaaS inventory, open the source workspace the user was backed up from.
Navigate to Users in the side menu.
Hover over the user’s row, and then click (Restore). The Restore to Google Workspace panel opens on Choose Snapshot.
In Choose Snapshot, choose the month, select the tab of the vault that holds the snapshot, and then select the snapshot in the Snapshot time (UTC) table. Eon preselects the newest snapshot, so you can click Next to keep it.

Choose the restore workspace

Choose the restore workspace you want to restore to.

Restore Account lists the connected restore workspaces as cards.

Choose the apps to restore

In Apps, select the apps to restore. The list includes only the apps the snapshot holds for the user, Drive and Gmail. To restore only one of them, clear the other.

An app whose backup failed in the snapshot you chose is unavailable. To restore it, start over with an earlier snapshot. A snapshot that holds no data for the user has nothing to restore, so choose another snapshot.

Set where the data goes

Each app you selected has its own screen in Settings:

Drive: Enter a Folder name. Eon creates the folder in the user’s own My Drive and restores the files into it.
Gmail: Set the Label that Eon adds to the restored mail, such as Eon Restored. To restore without an added label, turn Label off.

Start the job and monitor it

In Review, check the summary of what Eon will restore.

Click Restore, then track the job from View job, or from the Restore jobs tab on the Jobs page.

When the job completes, the user’s files are in the new folder in their My Drive, and the restored messages are in their mailbox. Restored messages keep the labels they had when Eon backed them up, plus the added label if you left Label on.

The job’s details show a step for each app, Drive restore and Mailbox restore, so you can see which app had the problem. For what each status means, see Restore Job Statuses.