Own Your Privacy in Google Drive

Best practices for storing and sharing in Drive

• Use your Shared Drives for teamwork/projects and use MyDrive for personal files
• When possible only share with specific people or groups
• Limit access to the level appropriate for the document (Viewer, Commenter, Editor)

Differences between My Drive and Shared Drives

Google Drive is composed of:

• My Drive, which stores files owned by individuals

• Shared drive, which stores files owned by a group or department 

See article 1.1 Differences between My Drive and shared drives for more information.

Sharing files in Google Drive:

Only sharing your files with those who need access to them.

There are two methods to share content within Google Drive:

• Share with people and groups: Granting access to specific individuals you want to collaborate with on the file.
• Get link: Granting access to anyone who has the link to the file.

How to share a file with people and groups:

1. Select the file you want to share.
2. Click Share or Share .
3. Under "Share with people and groups," enter the email address you want to share with. 
4. Choose to notify people.
   
   • If you want to notify people that you shared a doc with them, check the box next to Notify people. If you notify people, each email address you enter will be included in the email.
   • If you don't want to notify people, uncheck the box.
5. Click Share or Send.

How to share a link:

You can send other people a link to your file so anyone with the link can use it. When you share a link to a file, your name will be visible as the owner of the file.

1. Select the file you want to share.
2. Click Share or Share Get link.
3. Under “Get Link”, click the Down arrow .
4. Choose who to share the file with.

Tip: If you use your Google account for work or school, you can choose to only share files and folders with a specific audience, like your department. You might see a description of each audience when you hover over the group name.

Click Copy link Done.

Copy and paste the link in an email or any place you want to share it

Access Levels to files in Google Drive

When you share a file with an individual or group, you can choose what they can do with it:

• Viewer: People can view but can’t change or share the file with others.
• Commenter: People can make comments and suggestions but can’t change or share the file with others.
• Editor: People can make changes, accept or reject suggestions, and share the file with others.

• Learn more about how others view, comment, or edit files.

References:

• Share files from Google Drive
• Share folders in Google Drive
• Stop, limit, or change sharing
• Store & share files or folders with shared drives