How do I delete a DISABLED Google account from my phone?

[AC Question]

I recently left a job at a company that used Gmail for corporate e-mail, and gave us all company Google accounts. Before I had gotten around to deleting my old work Google account from my Android 5.0.1 phone (Samsung Galaxy S4), the company deleted/disabled my account. No biggie, you would think, since the primary account on the phone is my personal gmail account, not the company one, which I just had there as a secondary account so I could check my work e-mail on my phone.

However... I am unable to delete the account from my phone. Whenever I go to Settings -> Accounts -> Google, I get an error "Unfortunately, Settings has stopped." I think it's probably the fact my secondary account is now disabled that is causing the attempt to open my Google Account Settings to fail.

Now, I'm stuck in this weird mode on my phone where I am constantly getting error messages on my phone saying "Account Action Required" and asking me to enter my login information for my old work account. When I do sign in, it tells me "This Google Account has been disabled. ..." Yes, I know, Android, and I even know why, but you won't let me delete it!

Most annoying is that I CANNOT use the Hangouts app, even with my personal gmail account, because every time I open it I get a message saying "A change in your account requires that you sign in again", asking me for my old secondary account info, and then when I log in, I get the "this account has been disabled" error and it won't let me go further in the app.

Please help, how on earth do I delete a DISABLED, no-longer valid Google account from my phone?

 

[Rukbat]

The Google account is not an email account, it's the account linking the phone and Google. Go to the email account for your email app, then to the disabled account, and you should be able to delete it.

 

[aprevost]

I'm the original poster. And I'm 95% sure that before, when I would go to Settings -> Accounts -> Google, I would see two different accounts there, one my personal account, one my company account.

Regardless... tried your suggestion, it doesn't work. My e-mail app for the company account was Gmail. I go to Gmail, I see both of my accounts, the personal and the company account. I click on "Manage accounts" in Gmail, I'm taken to an "Accounts" settings page with the only option being "Google". I click on "Google", and I get the same error I get when I go to "Settings" -> "Accounts" -> "Google"... "Unfortunately, Settings has stopped.

This is obviously a bug in Lollipop. I'm just trying to figure out a way to workaround it so I can use Hangouts again, and the phone stops asking me to log in to my old company account every 5 minutes.

 

[aprevost]

Hi again folks - I ended up e-mailing the CTO of my former company today and asking him to temporarily re-enable my company Google account until I can work this issue out and get that account removed from my phone.

He has done so... I am now once again able to log in to my old company account, and that has made it possible for me to use Hangouts (with my personal account, NOT the company account) and other Google apps on my phone successfully again.

However... I am still not able to delete the company account from my phone. When I click on Settings -> Accounts -> Google, I am still getting the same error, Settings is closing on me, with an Alert window saying "Unfortunately, Settings has stopped." So having the company account reactivated doesn't seem to have fixed that.

No explanation as to why Settings stops, it just does... and it only happens when I try to open the Google account settings, if I click on any of my other account types under Settings -> Accounts, there's no problem.

Anybody have any idea how to workaround or fix this, without having to do a factory reset of the phone?

 

[aprevost]

Only Device administrator enabled is Android Device Manager, "Allow Android Device Manager to lock or erase a lost device".

 

[Mikejboss57]

Hi there. Unfortunately, I have had some issues with the whole business of the link between a phone and its corresponding email accounts being broken. Just be thankful that the phone was not purchased with the account that was closed. (And I have it direct from Project Fi that the email account is the phone account and is your Google account - the email account is everything.)

If you used Project Fi as your data provider then I'd suggest asking them for assistance. But I'd put money on them saying the same thing I suggest :backup and reset to factory. It's just like the earlier years of PC's when tech support always responded to any problem with "Ctrl - Alt-Del".

With Android 8 this is very easy and takes no time. I've done it a couple times on 7 and it was just as easy as long as I did not need to reprovision (change primary account). So you should have no problem and spend less than an hour (depending on bandwidth and the amount of data on your phone that isn't already backed up). Good luck and if you want to be a good citizen, be sure to tell your story to Google via Feedback. It can't hurt and it may save others from the same thing if Google ever slows down enough to fix the bugs from their past releases before racing ahead and rolling out newer, cooler, feature-rich Android versions that have those same old bugs and a whole pile of new ones.

 

[Jeff Schnick]

I opened the Google account I wanted to delete, selected the 3-bar icon and disabled synchronization of each of the Google tools (docs, gmail, etc.), one my one. After that, I was able to remove the account.