Put a group inside another group

4 steps 7 min Updated 4 November 2026

A group can contain other groups, not just people. Everyone in the inner group is treated as being in the outer group too — and it stays that way as the inner group changes.

This is the difference between a live link and a copy:

A group inside a group — as people join and leave the inner group (in Realsmart or through the MIS), the outer group follows automatically. Nothing to maintain.
Bulk add to group — copies whoever is in the group at that moment. Later changes are not picked up.

Use nesting when a custom group should always mirror a class, year group or staff group.

Before you start

You must be an admin with the Manage users & groups permission for the current school.
Both groups must be in the same school.

Steps

Step 1: Open the group

Select Groups in the left sidebar, find the outer group and select its name.

Step 2: Switch to the Members tab

Select the Members tab. The Groups in this group card sits above the member list.

Step 3: Search for the group

In the Add a member or group… search box, start typing the name of the group you want to add. Groups appear in the results alongside people, labelled Group.

Step 4: Select the group

Select it from the results. It is added straight away and appears in Groups in this group with its current member count, and you see "…" added. Its members stay in step automatically.

Result

Everyone in the inner group counts as a member of this group, now and as it changes. The link is sent to your connected platforms straight away, usually within a few minutes.

If the outer group has a Google Classroom, the inner group's staff become teachers in it and its learners become students. See Create a Google Classroom for any group.

Common task: combine several classes into one group (and Classroom)

For example, to give every Year 7 English set one shared group and Google Classroom:

Create the combined group. On the Groups page, select Add group, name it (for example Yr7-English), leave Status as Protected and select Create group. See Create a group.
Bring the sets in — choose one way:
- Live (nest them): on the new group's Members tab, type each set's name in Add a member or group… and select it. Repeat for every set. Pupils and staff who join or leave a set follow automatically.
- One-off copy: on the Groups page, search for the sets (for example En) and check the list — a short search can also match groups such as "Enrichment". Tick the sets, choose Add members to group in the action bar, search for the new group and select Add members. Everyone in the ticked sets is copied in now, locked, and later changes in the sets aren't picked up. See Bulk actions on groups.
Choose who owns the classroom. On the new group's Details tab, pick the Main teacher and select Save changes. The list only shows staff who are members of the group directly, so if you nested the sets, add the teacher who should own it to the group as well.
Check the classroom. If Provision Google Classroom is on, the combined group gets its own Google Classroom, usually within a few minutes: every set's teachers become its teachers, and the pupils its students. Its Classroom tab shows the status and who is in it. New classrooms start as Provisioned — use Make active on that tab, or ask the main teacher to accept it in Google Classroom.

Nest or copy? Nest when the combined group should match the sets all year. Copy when it's a one-off, or when you want to remove the odd pupil — with nesting you can't take one person out without taking them out of their set.

Each set keeps its own classroom too; the combined classroom is an extra one. To add a single teacher to every set's classroom instead, see Add a teacher to a Google Classroom — one class or many. For the classroom limits and timing, see Create a Google Classroom for any group.

What each control does

Google role (only when Google sync is on) — the role the inner group's people get in the outer Google group: Group default, Member, Owner or Manager.
Google email (only when Google sync is on) — whether the inner group's people get a copy of email sent to the outer Google group: Gets email (Google's default) or No email. This doesn't change who can post — that's still set by their role and the group's Who can post message setting.
Convert to individuals — copies whoever is in the inner group right now into this group as locked individual memberships, then breaks the link. Use it when a group should keep the people it has today but stop following the other group. This cannot be undone automatically — you would have to add the group back.
✕ (remove) — breaks the link only. The inner group, its own members and this group's own members are all untouched.

Let staff email a group without getting every email

A common set-up is to nest your staff groups into each year group, give them the Owner role (or rely on the school's default staff role) and set the year group's Who can post message to All owners can post. Staff can then email the whole year, and students can't. But Google sends every member a copy of every message by default, so all your staff get every email sent to every year group.

To stop that, set Google email to No email on each staff group in Groups in this group. Staff keep their role, so they can still post, but they no longer get a copy of what's sent. Repeat it on each year group you've nested staff into.

While a nested group is set to No email, the sync adds its people to the Google group individually, with their subscription set to No email. It stops nesting the Google group itself, because a nested Google group would still deliver the mail to everyone in it. So anyone added to the staff group directly in Google, and not in Realsmart, won't be in the year group.

If someone is also in the year group directly, or through another nested group that's set to Gets email, they keep getting the email.

How it reaches your platforms

Both platforms honour the nesting — they just do it differently, because of what each one allows:

Google Workspace — the inner group is added as a member of the outer Google group, so Google itself understands the nesting, and its people are added to the outer group too. While the nested group is set to No email, only its people are added (see above).
Microsoft Entra — a Microsoft 365 group can't contain another group, so the sync puts the inner group's people into the outer group's membership directly. The result is the same: they're in the group, and they stay in step as the inner group changes.

Google only nests a group that is Active or Protected, has Sync this group to Google switched on, and is of a group type your school has selected for Google group sync. A nested group that is Suspended, or has its sync switched off, isn't added to the outer Google group.

Either way you manage one link here, and the sync keeps both platforms right. To check what actually arrived, open the group's Cloud tab — see See who is actually in the group on Google or Entra.

Troubleshooting

"A group can't be added to itself" — you picked the group you are already editing.
"… is already in this group" — the link already exists; check the Groups in this group list.
"… would create a loop" — the group you are editing is already inside the group you picked. Remove that link first, or nest the other way round.
"I can't find the group in the search" — deleted groups are not offered, and the search only covers the current school.
"Staff still get the email after I chose No email" — the change reaches Google on the next sync, so it can take a little while. If it's still happening after that, check whether those people are also in the group directly or through another nested group that's set to Gets email.

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