Create and Manage Shared Drives

Audience

• All individuals who wish to collaborate or share files in Google Drive.

Creating a Shared Drive

Shared Drives are the best for storing collaborative content in Google Drive. Files stored in Shared Drives remain accessible to the group and are not affected by individual account changes.

1. Navigate to your Google Drive, and click on Shared Drives.
2. Click + New.
3. Enter a name for your Shared Drive that clearly represents your department/group or project. 
4. Click Create. 
   • New Shared Drives have a default storage limit of 25 GB. Submit the Expanded Shared Drive Request Form for an increase.

Note: Students cannot create Shared Drives themselves. Ask an employee or advisor to create one and add you as a Manager. Once you have Manager access, they can remove themselves from the Shared Drive.

Adding Members

1. Make sure you are a Manager of your Shared Drive in order to add members.
2. Open your Shared Drive and click Manage members at the top.
3. Add email addresses or a Google Group, then choose a role from the dropdown menu (new members are Content managers by default).
4. Choose whether to notify members, then click Send.
   • Invited members can now access it under Shared Drives in Google Drive.

Managing Member Access

Watch this linked video for a walkthrough of managing member permissions for Shared Drives.

Permissions and Access Levels

As a Manager, you can set permissions levels for every member of your Shared Drive. Consider access for each member carefully as these permissions extend to everything within the Shared Drive. 

Read Member permissions on files & folders for a complete breakdown of permissions.

• Viewers can view and download files.
• Commenters can view, comment, and suggest edits, but cannot edit files.
• Contributors can create and edit files, but cannot move or delete files.
• Content managers can create, edit, move, and delete files.
• Managers have full access to manage members, permissions, and settings.

Notes on Membership Access

• All members of a Shared Drive have access to all content in the Shared Drive. 
• Unlike in My Drive, there is no way to exclude a member from any single file or folder inside of a Shared Drive. 
• If you need someone to have access to only a subset of the content in a Shared Drive, do not add them as a member. Instead control their access to a folder or file by sharing items directly as you normally would in My Drive. 
• An easy way to manage your Shared Drive membership might be to create a Google Group (bConnected List) and add that group as a member with the appropriate level of access. Then as you need to change the members of your department/group, simply do so within the Group. Learn more about creating a bConnected List.