Deleting emails?

[chekmate1984]

Hi all

 

A teacher has sent confidential email to a year group(around 360 students)

 

We have changed password for all students at present so they cant view the email.

 

Issue is we now have to manually log on to all the emails and delete that email one by one then give account back

 

Wondered if there is a quicker way to do this than manual intervention like this?

 

I joined here 3 months ago and this is 2nd time this has occured!

[andy_b]

Office 365?

 

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/ediscovery-search-for-and-delete-email-messages?view=o365-worldwide

[PureDarkStar]

If it's Office 365, you can use the Compliance search: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/ediscovery-search-for-and-delete-email-messages?view=o365-worldwide

[Michael]

You can recall emails using the O365 Teacher account in Microsoft Outlook (not OWA).

[chekmate1984]

Sorry my bad, its google setup here.

[Michael]

A quick Google and you can only recall emails sent from Gmail within the first 30 seconds... although it's changeable up to 1 hour.

 

The link I posted above does work with O365, but only if the message hasn't been read/opened by the recipient.

 

I guess the bigger issue is how has this happened twice? I'm guessing renaming groups may be a consideration, as this is going to create a lot of work!

[Koldov]

Can't help with your current situation OP, but for the future I'm sure I've seen on here various versions of hiding addresses (think it was students > teachers but might be possible the other way round). Or at least stop it auto completing addresses or something along those lines, so that if a teacher wants to email a Year Group/Student, they have to manually type in the address?

 

Others more versed in Google will be able to help with this and the original issue regarding a Google version of the O365 tools I'm sure.

 

With the drama this has caused I'm sure it shouldn't be too difficult to get SLT onboard to make any changes you need!

[RLR]

There's two ways I can think of with Google:

 

1. Security Investigation Tool - This does require a premium version of Google Workspace such as Education Plus.

 

2. Use GAM - If you don't have this already you should defiantly start looking into it. It massivley helps managing Google domains.

 

 

We've put some measures in place to try stop staff emailing the wrong users but it still happens. Some examples: making it so only managers of a group can email student year groups. Creating content compliance rules to stop users emailing specific groups based on naming convention.

Edited July 6, 2023 by RLR

[PrimaryNetMan]

You can use GAM to bulk delete emails. Been a while since I have had to use this in anger but

 

Via the Admin console do an email log search to obtain the MESSAGE ID to be recalled / deleted then run the following

 

To delete from specific mailbox

gam user  delete messages query rfc822msgid: doit

 

To delete from all mailboxes

gam all users delete messages query rfc822msgid: doit

 

Source

[Garacesh]

There's also PSGSuite if you're more of a powershell aficionado

[chekmate1984]

Thanks i will be giving GAM a go or else tomorrow during teachers strike it be manual work for now and SLT to sort this out interally to avoid this again

[Garacesh]

Found my old thread documenting my PSGSuite code for doing exactly this

Bonus points, it tells you if the email was read or not, which is useful when it's something confidential being sent around.

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/scripts/223887-g-suite-global-email-purge-report-if-user-opened.html

[mavhc]

I suggest disabling the accounts, not changing the password, easier to undo

[Koldov]

Don't know anything about GAM or PS, but I thought bulk changing the password was as easy as uploading a .csv?

 

I'd agree though, disabling/enabling accounts rather than dealing with the aftermath of informing every single pupil that their password has now changed to something else is preferable!

Edited July 6, 2023 by Koldov

[chekmate1984]

we need to login to each students account so we can delete email - thats how its done in past hence did same now - but if gam works then we can just disable/suspend hopefully

 

Also any GAM users here as getting below error

 

Hi

 

 

 

First time i installed GAm To manage google admin but i am getting below email

 

 

 

C:\GAM>gam user [email protected] delete messages query rfc822msgid: doit

 

The system cannot find the file specified.

 

 

 

Where am i going wrong?

[mavhc]

how did you install it, did you run gam-setup.bat?

 

what does "dir" show?

[RLR]

we need to login to each students account so we can delete email - thats how its done in past hence did same now - but if gam works then we can just disable/suspend hopefully

 

Also any GAM users here as getting below error

 

Hi

 

 

 

First time i installed GAm To manage google admin but i am getting below email

 

 

 

C:\GAM>gam user [email protected] delete messages query rfc822msgid: doit

 

The system cannot find the file specified.

 

 

 

Where am i going wrong?

 

Are you including the "<>" in the command? I don't think this is needed.

 

gam user [email protected] delete messages query "rfc822msgid:[email protected]" doit

[Garacesh]

we need to login to each students account so we can delete email - thats how its done in past hence did same now - but if gam works then we can just disable/suspend hopefully

 

Also any GAM users here as getting below error

 

Hi

 

 

 

First time i installed GAm To manage google admin but i am getting below email

 

 

 

C:\GAM>gam user [email protected] delete messages query rfc822msgid: doit

 

The system cannot find the file specified.

 

 

 

Where am i going wrong?

 

You don't use the < and > for the rfc822msgid, just [email protected]

The system cannot find the file specified might just mean you need to use .\gam.exe instead, depending on what your console is.