My Drive
My Drive
This guide explains what My Drive is for and how to work with it. Use this when you have identified where to keep information in G Suite.
This guide is in beta. This means that we are still working to improve it, so your feedback will help us make sure that they are easy to understand and useful. Please let us know your suggestions.
My Drive is your central hub for using Google Drive. It is where you can keep your files, work on your own or work with others. If you use apps that work with G Suite, they will save to your My Drive by default. You can organise them into folders from there.
Your My Drive is personal to you. You can share specific files and folders with others when you need to. You can organise files and folders in My Drive in a way that works for you. You can also organise files other people share with you.
My Drive is a good place to work on:
My Drive is a good place to store:
My Drive is a good place to share:
My Drive is not the best option when:
In these cases it is better to use a Shared Drive. Storing files in a Shared Drive is the best way to gather together files that share the same retention period. A retention period is the amount of time you should keep something for. After that, it is either securely destroyed or permanently archived.
You can store most file types in My Drive. Read Files you can store in Google Drive to find out about supported files types and size limits.
You can structure your My Drive in the way that works best for you. You are responsible for organising and maintaining your My Drive. You can create folders and manage access without raising an ICT Support Request.
Files you create will save directly to the main page of your My Drive, by default. For example, when you create new Docs, Sheets and Slides or if you save a Gmail message as a PDF. This means you can end up with a long list of files that are not organised in folders. Without folders, you can use search to find the files you need.
You can use folders to organise files based on:
Read Organize your files in Google Drive to create folders and move files in My Drive.
You can organise files and folders that other people have shared with you from their My Drives. You can find these in ‘Shared with me’ on the left hand menu in Drive. Files and folders show as a list in ‘Shared with me’. You can sort them by title or by date. Read find files shared with you for more information.
You can safely organise files shared with you into any folder. Only people with access to the file can see it in the folder.
You cannot organise files shared from a Shared Drive in your My Drive. These files remain in the Shared Drive and show as links in your ‘Shared With Me’ list. You can search for them using the Drive Search box.
In My Drive you can link to the same file in many locations. This is useful when you use the same file for different things. These links work like file shortcuts. You can add them to lots of folders, instead of making separate copies of a file.
This might help you:
To link to a file in different places in My Drive, follow these steps:
When you create a file or folder in your My Drive, you are the owner. If someone else creates a folder in their My Drive, they are the owner.
A colleague may share a folder they own with you. If you put a file in that shared folder, you still own the file. The owner of the shared folder does not own your file.
Your file will also inherit the access permissions from the folder. This means anyone with access to the shared folder will have access to your file. Make sure you are comfortable with this before adding files to a shared folder.
To find out more about a file or folder, right-click on it and select View details. This shows the history of the file or folder in the details pane in Drive, including who created it.
If you need to see details of many files, change to a list view in Drive. The author is displayed next to the file name in the list.
You can only delete files and folders that you own. If you delete one that you own, you will delete it for everyone. You can not delete files and folders that others own. You can remove them from your My Drive but other colleagues will not be affected.
You can delete a folder that you own, including folders which others have saved files into. This does not delete other peoples’ files in the folder. You can still find these files using Search. They will also appear in your ‘Recent’ files list.
You should inform others before deleting a shared folder. This is to allow time to move their files elsewhere.
You can restore deleted files in Google Drive from your Bin.
When someone leaves the Council, we do not keep their account. Their personal files will not be available to colleagues.
Before you leave, you should:
If a colleague has already left, and you need access to their files, contact Service Support.
You can work together in My Drive by:
To understand safe and efficient ways to work together, read:
Any changes you make to a shared folder affect everyone using the folder. For example, if you rename the folder. This might affect how a colleague has organised it in their My Drive. Try to consult others when naming or organising shared folders.
You can share and restrict access to any folder or file that you own in My Drive.
You can share a folder, and:
Changing permissions of a folder changes the permissions of any sub-folders. Colleagues access to sub-folders might change. Consider whether this will cause problems.
Read Sharing with G Suite for more information on safe and efficient ways to share.
Keep permissions inside a shared folder as simple as possible. You can clearly label restricted folders by describing that in the folder title. For example, Project X Meetings (Restricted). The best way to keep files private is to keep them outside of a shared folder.
Read Managing permissions in G Suite for more information.
Let us know - your feedback will help us improve it.