You can transfer files that you own from your personal "My Drive" into a Shared Drive to provide your team with access. In a Shared Drive, the team owns the files, not an individual. This ensures that if a team member with access leaves a Brown University account, the files remain in the Shared Drive and access is not interrupted for the rest of the team. You can be a member of many Shared Drives, all of which are accessible from the same interface as your My Drive.

Important Limitation

A key difference between a Shared Drive and My Drive is that you are unable to move or create Google Forms that contain "File Upload" questions within a Shared Drive.

Ownership and Moving Permissions

To successfully move a file or folder into a Shared Drive, you must be the file's owner or have edit access. You must also have Manager access to the Shared Drive.

To properly move a file, it's best to ask the file's owner to move it themselves by adding them as a member of the Shared Drive.

Understanding File Access After a Move

When a file is moved from My Drive to a Shared Drive, permissions are updated as follows:

• Anyone who was previously added directly to the file as an editor, viewer, or commenter will keep their access as a "Guest".
• All existing members of the Shared Drive (including managers, contributors, and viewers) will gain access to the file as "Members" of the drive.

Be aware that permissions inherited from a parent folder in My Drive will not be transferred when you move only the file.

Example:

• Imagine you have a folder in your My Drive named "Meeting Minutes" that is shared with a group called Team ABC.
• A file inside called "December Minutes" automatically inherits the sharing settings, so Team ABC can access it.
• If you move only the "December Minutes" file to a Shared Drive, Team ABC's inherited access will be lost.
• However, if you move the entire "Meeting Minutes" folder into the Shared Drive, Team ABC's access permissions will be copied over.

Pro Tip: You can see a full list of who has access to any file or folder in a Shared Drive by clicking the "Share" button. This will show you a breakdown of users who are "Guests" and "Members".

How to Transfer Multiple Files at Once

To efficiently organize your Shared Drive, you can move multiple files simultaneously. It is a good practice to first coordinate with the Shared Drive "Managers" to determine the proper folder structure before moving content.

1. Select Your Files
   Use keyboard shortcuts to select the files you wish to move.
   • For files that are grouped together:
     1. Click on the first file in the list.
     2. Press and hold the Shift key.
     3. Click on the last file in the list to select the entire group.
   • For files that are not grouped together:
     • Click on the first file you want to move.
     • Press and hold the Control key (on Windows) or the Command key (on a Mac).
     • While holding the key, continue clicking on each additional file you want to select.
2. Move the Selected Files
   • Once your files are selected, right-click on any one of them.
   • From the menu, choose "Organize" and then select "Move".
   • In the navigation window that appears, click "All locations" near the top.
   • Choose "Shared drives" and click the > arrow next to it.
   • Select the destination Shared Drive and click the "Move" button. You can also click the > arrow next to the drive's name to place the files into a specific folder within that drive.

Moving a File While It Is Open

You can also move a file to a Shared Drive while you are actively viewing or editing it. To do this, simply click the "Move" icon, which looks like a folder, located next to the document's title at the top of the screen.