Deleting Gmail from your Google Account

We often receive questions in the Gmail Help Community on the consequences of deleting or how to delete the Gmail address from Google account for various reasons. Deleting a Gmail address from your account is very different from deleting your Google account as the first option only deletes the Gmail service from the Google account while the second option deletes the entire Google account (all included services such as Gmail, Drive, Calendar, Photos, Maps, etc.) The blog post - Google Accounts - how they work explains the concept of a Google Account in greater detail.

The steps to delete a Google service and specifically Gmail, are described in the following Google help articles. Be sure to read them for your better understanding of the issue.

• Remove Products
• Delete your Gmail service (specific to Gmail and containing details of what happens when you delete your Gmail service)

The intent behind writing this blog is to include the necessary screenshots so that you are a bit more assured about the process and share additional details which are not included in the help articles cited above.

Before you attempt to delete the Gmail service from the account, it is strongly suggested that you sign out of all Gmail/Google accounts from that browser and sign in only with the Google account you want to delete Gmail from.

Once you sign-in, click on the circular profile icon in the top right, and from the options, click on the blue "Google Account" button.

This will take you to the Google Account homepage for that account. In there, click on the "Data and personalization" link in the left panel and then scroll down a bit to click on the "Delete a service on your account" option under the "Download, delete or make a plan for your data" section.

Then, you will see the following page. In there, click on the "Delete a service" link underneath the "Delete a Google service" option.

Thereafter, you'll be presented with the sign-in verification page where you need to enter the password. Upon doing so, you'll see a page similar to what's included below; different Google services listed with options to remove them. To delete Gmail from Google Account, click on the Trashcan icon next to it.

Once you've clicked that icon, a pop-up window will appear asking you to enter the email address you'd subsequently use to sign-into the account to use the other Google services with this account. A couple of caveats:

• It can't be another Gmail address.
• It can't be a non-Gmail address that's presently being used either as a Google account or as an alternate email for a Google account.

Entering an email address that's either of the above will generate an appropriate error message:

Once, you've entered a suitable email address, click on the blue "Send Verification Email" link. You'll now be presented with this pop-up information box. Review the information, and then click on the blue "Got it" link.

Now, sign into the other address to locate and open the email from Google. It would read as below:

Click on the link to proceed. Once you do so, you'll be taken to a Confirm Gmail deletion page as shown below. Be sure to read the details included therein with great care. If you do not understand something properly or have doubts, DO NOT GO THROUGH. Click on the Cancel option to abort the procedure and post in the Gmail Help Community to receive clarification from a badged Product Expert.

When sure, click the checkbox and then the blue "Delete Gmail" button. You can see a couple of notifications at the bottom left of your screen. The final confirmation box looks like the screenshot below. Click on the blue "Done" button to complete the process.

Now, if you click on the circular profile icon in the top right, you'll notice the email address reference has changed. In this case, it now refers to my Yahoo! address.

This change can also be observed in the Email section under Contact info in the Personal info section as shown below.

In the Google Accounts Email page - https://myaccount.google.com/email, you can see the previous username listed as an Alternate username.

To conclude, a few words about the post-deletion sign-in process. You should be able to sign in using the non-Gmail email address and the previous password for the account. If you wish to sign in using the previous username, you can do so for all Google product sign-in pages such as Google Accounts, Drive, Calendar, etc. except Gmail where you will be prompted to add Gmail to your account.