#Manually Delete Backup Data

Cloud Backup for Google Workspace allows the removal of Drive and Gmail backup data for specific users, as well as the deletion of backups for specific shared drives, to prevent future restores. To search for users or shared drives for removing the relevant backup data at the item level, navigate to Data management > Manually delete backup data.

*Note: The data deletion actions will be recorded in System auditor.

![The "Manually delete backup data" page.](/en/google-backup/user-guide/data-management/images/image56.png "The "Manually delete backup data" page.")

On the Manually delete backup data page, administrators can refer to the following instructions to delete backup data:

1. If your organization has enabled Vault data protection, select a tab from Google Workspace and Vault.

   ![The "Manually delete backup data" page.](/en/google-backup/user-guide/data-management/images/image57.png "The "Manually delete backup data" page.")

2. Select the User services or Shared drives data type.

3. Refer to the following instructions to search for users or shared drives.

   • Under the User services tab, follow the steps below:

     1. To search for a user, enter keywords of the username in the Delete data for user field and select the desired user’s email address from the drop-down list.

     2. Click the Gmail tab to delete the user’s Gmail backup data, or click the Drive tab to delete the user’s Drive backup data.

        If your organization has enabled Vault data protection, you can click the Gmail or Drive tab in the Google Workspace section, and click the Gmail (Vault) or Drive (Vault) tab in the Vault section.

     3. To search for the user’s item-level backup data to be deleted, configure the following search conditions:

        • Under the Gmail or Gmail (Vault) tab, you can configure Backup time range, Label name, Subject, Date sent, Sent from, Sent to, and Sent cc conditions to search for backup data of the user’s emails.

        • Under the Drive or Drive (Vault) tab, you can configure Backup time range, Folder name, File name, Label name, Created date, Modified by, and File size conditions to search for backup data of the user’s files.

   • Under the Shared drives tab, follow the steps below:

     1. To search for a shared drive, enter keywords of the shared drive name in the Delete data from your shared drives field and select the desired shared drive from the drop-down list.

     2. You can configure Backup time range, Folder name, File name, Label name, Created date, Modified by, and File size conditions to search for item-level backup data.

4. Click Search to search for backup data based on your configured search conditions. If you want to reset the search conditions, click Reset.

5. In the search results table, find and select the items that you want to delete. If you want to modify the search conditions, click the button to expand the search panel and configure the search conditions.

6. If you want to archive information of the data deletion, before you delete backup data of the selected items, you can click Export deletion information to export an Excel file that contains information of the selected items.

7. To delete one or multiple items, select items in the search results table, and then click Delete above the table.

8. Refer to the instructions below based on your organization scenarios:

   • If your organization has enabled the Approval process for data deletion and there are multiple users in the Administrator group, the Delete data confirmation window appears as below. To submit a deletion request for approval, enter your comment and click Submit. Data deletion requests and email notifications will be sent to the administrators. Once the requests are approved, the deletion jobs will start to delete data.

     ![The "Delete data" confirmation window.](/en/google-backup/user-guide/data-management/images/image58.png "The "Delete data" confirmation window.")

   • If your organization hasn’t enabled the Approval process for data deletion, or if your organization has enabled the approval process but there is only one user in the Administrator group, the Delete data confirmation window appears. To confirm the deletion, select I understand that the selected backup data will be permanently deleted. option and click OK. A notification message appears on the page to show if the job has successfully started.

9. Once the job starts, you can monitor the deletion job process and view the job report in Job monitor. For more information, see Monitor Jobs and Download Job Reports.