In certain situations, administrators of ProtonMail Professional accounts may lose access to certain administrative privileges.
Administrator privileges can be lost in the following situations:
- Your Proton Password was reset. This only happens when you forget your password and reset it. There is no impact if you merely change your ProtonMail password.
- Your organization password was reset.
- Your organization key was changed.
In these situations, your administrator privileges will be restricted. The following actions will no longer be permitted:
- Creating new users
- Reading emails from non-private sub-users
How to restore full administrator privileges
Administrator privileges for your account can be restored in the following situations:
Another administrator performed an organization password reset or organization key change, and knows the new organization password.
If another administrator in your organization performed an organization password reset or organization key change, you will need to ask that other administrator for the new organization password.
Entering this new organization password will restore your full administrative privileges. If you enter an incorrect password, you will see an error message.
You reset your account password, but you still know the organization password
If you have restricted privileges because you reset your Proton password, but you still know the organization password, you can restore privileges by navigating to Settings → Go to settings → Organization → Organization & Keys → Password & Keys and entering the organization password when prompted.
All administrators have forgotten the organization password, but at least one administrator can still log in to their ProtonMail account
In this case, the administrator who can still log in can change the organization password, and give you the new organization password. Entering this new organization password will restore full administrator privileges.
How to change the organization password
If nobody in your organization knows the organization password, an administrator who has access to their ProtonMail account can change it. If this is you, it is your responsibility to communicate the new organization password to the other organization administrators
1. Log in to mail.protonmail.com and go to Settings → Go to settings → Organization → Organization & Keys. Select Change password.
2. Choose a new password for your organization and click Save when you are ready (as a security measure, you will also be asked to reconfirm your account password).
Nobody in your organization has the organization password, and no other administrators can access their ProtonMail accounts
If this happens, you will need to reset both your Proton account password and the organization password. Resetting the organization password has the following consequences:
- You will no longer be able to read the emails of organization users that were secured with the old password
- All other administrators will have restricted privileges until they have followed the steps on this page to restore their administrative privileges.
Resetting the organization password should therefore only be done as a last resort.
How to reset the organization password
1. Reset your Proton password.
2. Go to Settings → Go to settings → Organization → Organization & Keys and convert all non-private users in your organization to private users, or remove them. See here for more details.
You cannot reset your organization password if your organization has non-private users.
3. Go to Organization → Users & addresses → Organization & Keys. You will be shown a pop-up window asking you to restore administrator privileges. Click Reset keys.
If you close this window, you will also see the same option in the main settings screen. Click Reset organization keys.
4. Select an encryption scheme for the key, then click Next.
5. Choose a new password. Click Save when you’re ready (you will also need to confirm your Proton account password).
How to transition your business to ProtonMail
Step 1: Connect a custom domain
Step 2: Create an organization
- Organization passwords and keys
- Restore administrator privileges (you are currently here)
Step 3: Add new users to your Proton account
Step 4: Migrate existing email messages