There is a good chance if you land on my post that you have been trying to setup your Google Apps for Work account with your primary domain but ran into the “red letter notification of death”. That notification warning says, “That address is currently used by a personal Google Account. Use a different address for your organizational account.”.
Here lies the issue in my scenario… back in 2010 I decided to create a Youtube account with my main email address. Never thought different about it. Over that time Google has combined services where you have a central login. Then they migrated over where you can manage multiple Youtube Channels from one login. All stuff I am aware of and use for other types of accounts and client work. Recently I decided it was time to move my email from 1and1 (yes, I know… I was using the basic webmail). This was prompted because a few months ago I moved hosting companies to Q4 Cloud Hosting to the latest cloud technology. This was a great time to spend time working on my things and get it switched out.
Renaming Your Personal Google Account With New Username AKA New Gmail Address
So I venture down the rabbit hole to sign up. Things were moving along and then I get hit with the error. I venture over to my Youtube account and I go ahead and add a “Gmail” address to my account. I did this by simply selecting from the dropdown on the top right where you can select other Google Services. I picked Gmail. A notification walked me right through it all.
I had never did anything else under my main email address with that Youtube account other than my channel. My thought here was if I make my main domain a secondary because the new free gmail address would become your new login that this could fix the problem. Of course I knew that I have to verify my domain with Google but it was worth a shot, right? That didn’t do the trick exactly. I still received the same error upon signing up.
I Don’t Want To Use Another Email Address To Signup
My next concern was if I didn’t use my main email address on signup and I was ONLY paying for one account for $5/mo…. would I be wasting it on an account? Silly me, of course I knew I could create an alias as [email protected] but I didn’t want to use [email protected] for my main account. So I made a quick post on Google’s Forum… BOOM.. quick response but I was still a bit hesitant. It seemed all complicated and here I am dealing with my business email and I knew email was still flowing in during this brief down time.
(TIP: Before you switch email hosting providers… backup your email but setup a forward address before you change the MX records and/or while DNS is propagating… you can still get stuff while the process is being done. You have to give the internet worlds a chance to catch up.)
Guys, it’s pretty easy. If this scenario where you OWN the domain and YOU created that old login using a personal Google Account… it will seem like a no brainer after you get it all set up.
Solution For Account Already Exists Error – Google Apps
I went ahead and used [email protected] email for signup. I went through the setup process and verified my domain like a boss. Then, I simply clicked on my one email account > Rename user > Popup takes place then select what I wanted to begin with… VIOLA, it Worked! Then the email I used on signup became an Alias. You can check your “Alias's” under the Account section in the screenshot as you see below. It will give you all the deets!
Google tells you that the next time you use your main domain address to log into that service, that it will make you create a new user name (gmail account address). In my case, I did this previously so when I logged back into my Youtube channel.. it was all golden. For you though, you may have to do this step post Google Apps setup and domain verification.
After all this I had to step back a bit and laugh because it was way easier than anything I read on a forum. I felt some lucky soul may come across my post here and feel it was helpful to them.
Thanks!
Dynamic, high-energy executive with history of performance-oriented leadership to e-commerce sales and marketing within the online marketing and advertising industry. MichaelStults.com is where I share my thoughts on different marketing methods, wordpress, leadership, and various topics that I feel inspired to write about. Please take time to learn more about Rare Disease at www.BriParDun.com