Drive for Desktop: Copying, cutting & pasting google app files between folders in your file browser

[pcarini]

Why can't you copy, cut and paste google's web-based files between folders in your computer's file browser? Like most people in the world I've grown up browsing and sorting my files on my computer's local drive using Windows File Explorer. Mac users do the same using Finder. Ctrl+x, Ctrl+c, Ctrl+v are the shortcuts PC people use to move their stuff around.

Problem is, you can't do this with google's web-based files. You get the Windows error 0x80070522, along with a Google drive message telling you to "sign into Google Drive on the web to duplicate a Google document."

After having guided my office from using Dropbox to adopting Workspace for the benefits of Google's integrated and free collaboration apps among other things, I now have to explain to my boss that he can no longer copy and paste his files like he was able to while using Dropbox. Maybe there is a good reason why this is difficult to achieve, but I think this capability should be introduced.

[JasonTM1]

As far as I know you cannot copy a folder from Dropbox on the web and paste it into a local file browser(Explorer/Finder) either.

If you were using file browser integration by installing the Dropbox app you can get similar functionality by installing Google's Drive for Desktop application. 

[pcarini]

My post is referring to copying, cutting & pasting google app files between folders in your file browser. I'm aware that you cannot do this while viewing your drive in Chrome (or other internet browser) or between Chrome and your local file browser (Explorer/Finder). I'm referring to another issue.

[JasonTM1]

You're right, I misunderstood the issue.

A nice solution would be for Google to add 'duplicate' to the list of custom Drive for Desktop options in the contextual menu that shows up when right clicking an item in the local browser. There are some handy options already such as 'copy link' and 'Share'. The ability to create a duplicate version of a web based document(docs/sheets/slides/etc) would be nice.

[CalebSpring]

Right if you copy/paste Google files (e.g. docs, sheets, etc) files in your file browser using Google Drive for Desktop you get an error stating it can't be done and that you need to do it browser. I am not 100% as to why this is not possible, however, you may want to search the feature idea area and either upvote someone else's idea or if one doesn't exist create your own feature idea for this request. 

[RokkShow]

Hope I'm not teaching grandma here but the reason for this is that Google files are not actually files - they are URLs to remote data stored in a big old Google sized server somewhere 🙂 I found this out the hard way a while back thinking that I had copied all my files locally so I could get way with deleting them from my Drive account. Google keep quite extensive backups for a goodly amount of time though (I think 30 days) and reinstated them within an hour of me asking. Media is actual bits and bytes and can be moved around of course. There is a pain in the artichoke solution which is to convert archived files to something like a PDF or a JPG/PNG - which will enable them to be moved around as per media. With a bit of AI search (is anyone still using Google?) I wouldn't mind betting there isn't a natty tool that will even do the conversion on the fly! [heads off to talk to Perplexity...]

[CalebSpring]

Also does Box have it's own native file type like Google Drive does? I guess what I am really asking is what file types was your boss copying and pasting to different locations in Box? With Google Drive for Desktop and Google Drive in the web you can now collaborate with Microsoft Office files which can be copied and pasted. So a work around might be to not use Google file types for creating docs. And if they are using Google File types, then they are already in the a browser and can then move the files around as need. 

[eleven11punk]

So I just tried posting and got an error...so sorry for the double post.

I found a solution. I too need to copy files for work. You need to make the files a .docx file (microsoft). To do this I had to open the file on Drive, email to myself (choosing the option to make it a .docx) and then drag that file from my email to Google Drive. That file is now able to be pasted and copied. This would be tedious with more than 5 files....but from now on I'm just creating .docx files and moving them to Drive when I can.

I also thought about changing the files form "streaming" to "mirroring" but the option is greyed out on Google Desktop! Which doesn't make sense because it's Google's own file....guess they want people to use their system but with Microsoft file types? They should've done that to begin with.....