Moving your digital life from one Google Drive to another can feel a bit like packing up your entire house – you know everything needs to go, but figuring out how and what exactly makes the cut can be a headache. Let's break down some of the common questions that pop up when you're tackling a Google Drive to Google Drive migration.
One of the trickiest bits often involves documents sitting in folders you don't technically own. Imagine Alice creating a "summary.docx" inside Bob's "Kick-off meeting" folder. When it's time to migrate, the system looks at who owns the folder. Since Alice doesn't own "Kick-off meeting," her "summary.docx" won't be moved during her migration. Bob's migration will include his "Kick-off meeting" folder, but again, Alice's "summary.docx" won't come along because Bob doesn't own it. This is the default behavior, and it can leave you scratching your head. A more robust approach, especially if you're moving to a different platform like OneDrive for Business, is to use a "Full Copy" mode, which handles these scenarios differently.
When it comes to the actual files, the conversion process is pretty neat. Native Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides get transformed into their Microsoft Office equivalents – Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, respectively. It's not always a perfect 1:1 translation, but it's remarkably close. Google Forms, however, are a bit different; they'll arrive as a zip file containing the form itself and its responses in a CSV. And those charming Google Drawings? They'll become JPGs, but sadly, they won't be editable after the move.
Now, for a Google Drive to Google Drive migration specifically, things are a little simpler on the format front. If a file is already in Google format, it stays that way. If it's a Microsoft format file on your source Google Drive, it'll remain a Microsoft format file on the destination. If you want to convert Google formats to Microsoft formats during the migration, you'll need to enable a specific support option.
Permissions are another area that can cause confusion. By default, when migrating to a new Google Drive or Shared Drive, only sharing permissions for users who exist in both the source and destination environments are preserved. If you have external users or users who haven't been set up on the destination yet, you'll need to use an advanced option to ensure their permissions are migrated. This often involves sending out email notifications to those external users, letting them know their access has been updated.
It's also worth noting a few things that don't typically make the journey: version history and comments. The creation date of your documents will also be updated to reflect the date of the migration. Permissions are converted as closely as possible, but some nuances, like Google's "can comment" permission, don't have a direct equivalent and will be dropped.
Ultimately, migrating your Google Drive is a process that requires a bit of planning and understanding of how these tools work. While the system does a lot of heavy lifting, being aware of these common quirks can save you a lot of time and frustration down the line.
