Personal Drive, team folders and sharing roles

Drive is where your files live. There are two kinds of space, and who can do what depends on your role.

Personal and team spaces

• My Drive is your own space. Files you upload here are yours, and you choose who else can see them.
• Team folders belong to a team rather than a person. Everyone added to the folder can open its files with the role you give them, and the files stay available when someone leaves.

The left sidebar of Drive also has Shared with me, Recent, Starred and Trash, plus a Storage meter and the list of Team folders.

Create a team folder

1. In Drive, choose New team folder (under Team folders in the sidebar).
2. Type a Name.
3. Under Members, use Add members to pick people or groups, then choose a role for each.
4. Choose Create.

To change members later, open the team folder and use Members and settings. Only managers can change members or delete the team folder, which deletes all its files.

The roles

• Viewer: can open and download.
• Commenter: can also comment.
• Editor: can add and change files.
• Owner (shown as Manager on a team folder): can also manage who has access.

On a single file or folder, Owner is the person who created it. On a team folder, the people who manage it are called managers.

Share a file or folder

1. Select the item and choose Share.
2. Under Add people or groups, pick who to share with, choose the Access to give, add an optional Message and choose Give access.
3. Under General access, choose Restricted: only people added, Anyone in the workspace, or Anyone with the link.

People with access lists everyone who has it and lets you change or remove them. Files inside a team folder show the team's roles.

Upload and organise

Choose New to Upload files, Upload a folder or make a New folder, or to create a Document, Spreadsheet or Presentation. Files can be up to 5 GB each. Use Move to and Make a copy in an item's menu to reorganise. Star an item to find it quickly under Starred.

Trash

Move to trash is not permanent. Items in the trash are deleted for good after 30 days, and you can Restore them until then. Delete forever and Empty trash cannot be undone.

Common problems

• "Open a folder you can edit to upload here." You have view or comment access only. Ask a manager for Editor.
• Storage is full. Empty the trash or delete large files you no longer need; your administrator can add storage on the plan.
• I cannot share outside the workspace. Your administrator may have turned that off.