When a colleague leaves, you may still need customer messages to reach their old address. In TrekMail, Suspend sign-in is the relevant control: it stops mailbox sign-in and sending while retaining stored mail and incoming delivery. Pause stops delivery too, so it solves a different problem. Arrange who takes responsibility for new enquiries before changing the departing person's access.
Separate the retained address from the departing person
Make a short record with two headings: what the business must keep, and what the person must no longer access. Under the first, include the receiving address, useful history, and the colleague responsible for new inquiries. Under the second, include the person's own mailbox login, their shared memberships, and any separate administrative account you know they used.
This avoids a common mix-up when an employee handled both a personal work address and a department address. If the department address is a shared mailbox, it has no direct sign-in to suspend. Suspend the departing employee's personal mailbox and review their shared membership while other colleagues keep their own access. Check the exact record you are changing before applying the action.
For the retained personal address, agree what the next owner needs to do. Someone may need to answer an open customer conversation, while somebody else only needs to preserve the archive. Do not give access to everyone merely because the original owner has left. Follow the appropriate shared-mailbox procedure if you choose that arrangement, then verify the resulting permissions separately.
You can also tell customers which address to use for future work. That is a communication decision, not a consequence of closing a login. Incoming mail continuing to arrive will not explain a change of contact to the sender. Decide who gives that explanation and how the team recognizes messages still arriving at the older address.
Suspend sign-in for the correct mailbox
Open the mailbox in Mailboxes, go to Limits, and find Sign-in. Add a clear internal reason if needed, then choose Suspend sign-in. Follow the mailbox sign-in suspension guide.
After suspension, the user cannot sign in to that mailbox or send from it. TrekMail revokes associated webmail sessions, app passwords, and device passwords for file synchronization. Changing or resetting the mailbox password doesn't lift the sign-in block.
Check the address before acting. The employee may have a personal work mailbox and access to shared sales@example.com. A shared mailbox has no independent sign-in; members use their personal accounts.
If you are ending all of the employee's work access, suspend their personal mailbox and separately review their shared mailbox permissions. The rest of the team can continue using sales@example.com.
Review access beyond the mailbox login
The employee may have a separate TrekMail management dashboard account. Check its membership and administrative permissions separately. Suspending email sign-in doesn't replace that review.
The same applies to separately issued API tokens and access to external systems such as a CRM, domain registrar, mailing service, or customer support application. List the systems the person used and assign responsibility for each.
Check active forwarding and email filters. They continue working while sign-in is blocked. If messages previously went to the employee's personal external address, review that route too.
Previously downloaded messages may remain on devices or in earlier copies. Server-side suspension does not delete them. Returning work devices and handling saved correspondence require separate company decisions.
Decide who handles new inquiries
Keeping delivery is useful when someone is responsible for the incoming messages. Decide whether you need a temporary monitoring period, to hand the address to a team, or to tell customers about a new contact.
To share access to the history, consider converting the ordinary mailbox to a shared one. This is a separate action involving member assignments. First decide who needs the correspondence. The shared mailbox guide explains the process.
A suspended mailbox still uses storage and counts towards plan limits. Monitor capacity, especially if the address regularly receives large documents.
Verify delivery and loss of access as separate outcomes
Use a test mailbox to learn the sequence before relying on it for the departure. Record that sign-in worked before the test, suspend it, and then check that the same sign-in is rejected. Test sending as a separate action. A message that cannot be sent and a message that cannot be received are different outcomes; the reason for choosing suspension is to preserve the latter.
Send a new harmless message from an outside address during the test suspension. When you restore the test mailbox for inspection, look for that message and for an older known message. You are checking both continued delivery and preservation of the existing history. Do not restore the departing employee's access just to reproduce a test that could be performed elsewhere.
Review forwarding before declaring the handover complete. A blocked login can coexist with a working rule that sends incoming messages to an external address. Decide whether each existing route still serves the business. The same review applies to filters: a rule created for the previous employee's workflow may continue moving or forwarding new mail after they leave.
Finally, ask the new responsible colleague to explain how they will find and handle tomorrow's inquiry. They should know the address, the access method they are meant to use, and who changes permissions if something is wrong. Record the date and the people involved. That record complements the technical change; it does not certify that every external service or every previously downloaded copy has been dealt with. Keep those remaining access paths in the company's wider departure process.
If access needs to be restored
Restore sign-in lifts the suspension. Existing messages and those received while access was blocked remain in the mailbox.
Revoked app and device passwords do not return automatically. Create new ones for email apps and synchronization. If the same person returns to work, this is a useful point to authorize only the devices they need.
Close the handover with two separate checks: a new message reaches the retained address, and the former user cannot continue the access you meant to revoke. Also review dashboard membership, API grants, forwarding and other independent access routes. Suspending a mailbox is not a complete staff-offboarding process, and it cannot erase copies downloaded earlier. Keep your own record of who now owns the address and when the change was made.
