When not to merge — people still at, or working at, another school
Merge users is for combining two records that are the same account by mistake. Two situations look like duplicates but aren't, and merging doesn't do what you'd want in either.
If this person is still at the other school
Merging always frees up the secondary's username so it doesn't sit there blocking a genuine new starter. That part is permanent, and it's the point of merging — it's how ADAdmin keeps school data tidy when the same real person had two records by mistake.
But ADAdmin isn't the only thing that decides who's active at a school — the school's own MIS (SIMS, Wonde, etc.) is, and it's checked again on every scheduled sync. If the person you merged away is still genuinely enrolled or employed at the other school, its next import will simply create a fresh, active account for them there again — a new record, freshly set up in Google Workspace or Microsoft Entra, exactly as if they were a new starter. This happens automatically and isn't something suspending, renaming, or any other choice on the merge screen can prevent, because the MIS import doesn't know (or care) that a merge happened — it only knows what the school currently reports.
What this means in practice:
- Merging is durable for someone who has actually left the other school — nothing will bring them back.
- Merging is not durable for someone who is still genuinely there — they will reappear on the next import, with a brand-new account, regardless of what you chose on the sync options step.
- If you're not sure whether someone has left, check with the school before merging rather than relying on the merge to remove them.
Merging someone who works at more than one school
If someone genuinely has a legitimate, ongoing role at more than one school (for example, a teacher who works at two schools in your trust), don't merge them.
Here's why merging doesn't work for this: the tool can only keep one live account, at the primary's school. The moment you merge, the other school's copy of that person is removed, and their groups, Google Classroom, and calendar access at that school are removed with it. Adding the old email address as an alias afterwards does not bring any of that back — group and Classroom membership is driven by which school has an active record for that person, not by what email aliases exist. If the two schools happen to share the same Google sign-in domain, this isn't an issue (they're really one shared account and the tool tells you so); if they don't share a domain, you'll see a warning about this on the sync options step, and it's telling you exactly that.
What to do instead: keep a separate, active account for this person at each school where they genuinely work. That's the normal, supported way to represent one person with a legitimate role at multiple schools — each school's own sync keeps their groups and Classroom access there up to date independently. If you're not sure how to set that up, contact support.
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