UW-Madison Google Workspace - Preserve My Drive Data Using a Shared drive

Creating shared drives allows teams to share files without having to adjust individual permissions and ensures that files are not lost when a file owner loses eligibility for the UW-Madison Google service.

Audience: This document applies to current faculty, staff, and students only. This document does not apply to former affiliates (ex: former employees, former students). Former affiliates are not eligible for Google shared drive access.

Reminder: Shared drives with zero members or external members only (non UW-Madison accounts such as your personal gmail or other email) will be selected for deactivation. Learn more.


  1. Log into your UW-Madison Google Account.
  2. Create a shared drive.

  3. Temporarily add the file owner as a member of the new shared drive. 

    • Note: Files cannot be added to a shared drive unless the file owner is a member of that shared Drive. Once the files have been transferred, the original file owner can be removed from the shared drive. 

  4. Go back to My Drive and in the search bar, search for owner:name (ex: owner:bucky badger).

    Searching for Documents

    • Note: Doing this will only show files that are shared with you. Files that were created but not shared with you will not appear.
  5. Drag the files or folders that you would like to transfer from My Drive to the new shared drive, which can be found in the menu on the left-hand side.

    Dragging Document

  6. Remove the original file owner's membership from the shared drive.



Keywords:
files, google drive, shared, share, shared drive, mydrive, transfer, move 
Doc ID:
122606
Owned by:
Heidi S. in UW Google Apps
Created:
2022-11-22
Updated:
2024-11-19
Sites:
DoIT Help Desk, Google Apps