What is Google Inactive Account Manager and How to Configure It

Google Inactive Account Manager is a feature that lets you decide what becomes of your Google data (Gmail, Picasa, Google+, Google Drive and other Google stuff you may use) when you are no more or when you are no longer using your Google accounts. By configuring your Inactive account manager, you basically tell Google how to deal with your data: whether to pass it on to your family or destroy it. In this post, we take a look at how to configure Inactive Account Manager.

How to Configure Google Inactive Account Manager

Here’s how you configure and set up your Inactive Manager Account:

1. Open any Google app and click the link next to your image profile.

2. From the drop-down menu, select Account.

3. In the Accounts page, in the Account Management section, click Learn more and go to setup. Alternatively, just click here.

4. Check out the brief description of the service and then click Setup.

5. The setup page displays four sections:

Alert me

In this section, you’ll need to input a mobile number and an alternate email address so that Google will alert you one month before you account is deemed inactive.

Timeout period

In this section, you can set the time period that Google can consider an account inactive. It can be 3 months, 6 months, 9 months or 12 months. This means that if your account remains inactive for the set number of months Google will consider your account to be inactive or dead, irrespective of what happens to you.

Notify contacts and share data

In this section, you can add up to 10 contacts such as your friends or family members who will be notified when your account gets deemed inactive. You can also configure each of the contacts to either just get the notification or provide access to each of your Google accounts. To do this you will need to check the Share my data with this contact option.

If you enable the option to share your data with your contacts, you must provide Google with their phone numbers. Google will then send them a verification code so that they can download your data. The download option will remain open for up to 3 months.

Finally, there’s also an option to set an automated response for messages that get sent to the inactive account.

Optionally delete account

In this final section, you can simply choose to delete all your email messages. Just hit the No button to activate the option to destroy all your email when your Google account becomes inactive.

Finally, when the entire set up is configured, click Enable.

So that’s how the Inactive Account Manager lets you manage your Google data when your account becomes inactive.