Creating and Managing Your Own Google Group

Google Groups are versatile mailing lists, created for personal or team use. Beyond simple mail forwarding, they can function as collaborative inboxes, mimicking shared email accounts. Google Groups also play a broader role in Google Workspace, simplifying access management for Shared Drives and Calendar events. While new groups automatically get a ‘.group’ suffix (e.g., applefans.group@lafayette.edu), you can contact the Help Desk to have it removed. The group owner or creator ultimately controls email sending permissions.

Creating and Managing a Google Group

Create a Google Group

  1. Select the Groups icon from the “waffle” in the upper-right-hand corner of any Google Workspace application, and near the top-left, click Create Group.
    • Note: a manually created group will have “.group” appended to its name (e.g., myteam.group@lafayette.edu). If you’d like the “.group” suffix to be removed from your group name, please contact the Help Desk.
  2. Enter the info and settings for the group.
  3. Click Create Group.
    • Wait a few minutes for your new group to become active before sending a message to it or adding members.

See Google Group Roles and Permissions for more information on group membership and permission levels.

Manage your group's settings

The following settings can be accessed by clicking Group settings in the bottom left menu:

  • General: Change the group’s name, description, and email settings.
  • Posting policies: Determine who can moderate content and post to the group.
  • Email options: Set features to be included in every email.
    • A subject prefix: This helps identify messages as group emails by adding a prefix, e.g., [ITS-group], to the beginning of each email subject.
    • A footer: This can help users access subscription settings and find the post in Google Groups.
    • Auto replies: This allows you to respond automatically to members and non-members of the group.
  • Member moderation: Set who can manage members and modify roles in the group.
  • Member privacy: Identify who can contact and view the group members.
  • Delete Group

Information about your group

The About item, the last on the left menu, shows basic information about the group, such as the owners and privacy settings.

Add members to your group

See Adding People to Your Google Group for more information.

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