Google Workspace migrations

[aydee]

Hi All,

Coming to you guys to hopefully pull on all the varied experiences.
We have a new Primary school joining our MAT, and due to many things i wont go here, they have 2 google workspace instances running at the moment. 1 with all their licences linked to it, and one with their email domain linked to it.

I guess my main question boils down to: Can I  add a domain as a secondary (to eventually transition it to primary) while it is currently the primary domain of another Google Workspace instance?

[TheHyperTechie]

could be wrong, but I believe sadly not - a domain (and any aliases) can only exist in a single tenancy at a time. 

 

You would need to create a temp domain, move users to this, migrate files etc, then when ready - delete the old domain from the instance you want removed.

[aydee]

5 minutes ago, HyperTech said:

could be wrong, but I believe sadly not - a domain (and any aliases) can only exist in a single tenancy at a time. 

 

You would need to create a temp domain, move users to this, migrate files etc, then when ready - delete the old domain from the instance you want removed.

yeah, a 3rd domain, one off just to use as a gap stop - add as secondary, promote to primary, remove the one we want to use and import it to original instance and promote it to primary there...
annoying, but makes sense thank you @HyperTech!

[TheHyperTechie]

15 minutes ago, aydee said:

yeah, a 3rd domain, one off just to use as a gap stop - add as secondary, promote to primary, remove the one we want to use and import it to original instance and promote it to primary there...
annoying, but makes sense thank you @HyperTech!

Yep.

 

- Add temp domain

- Promote it to primary

- Update users, migrate items across from original instance (if you need to)

- Delete the domain you want/need from the original instance.

- Re-add domain to the single instance you want and promote it.

 

Very frustrating, we had a couple of schools that had similar - like all of their devices and licenses in one, and users in another. No idea why they set it up like that though!

Edited November 12, 2025 by HyperTech