Copy folder from personal Google Drive to Workspace Shared Drive

[crap]

After creating a workspace account, I realized I couldn't copy my drive files to a shared folder all at once.  I've been using my personal account for my business so I have thousands of folders/files.  I can't transfer them manually.

The alternative is to download everything and re-upload it to the shared drive.  That's fine, except it's a lossy procedure.  The attribution for the comments in our docs lose connection to the google accounts that created them leaving behind only the name of the person.  I don't know what other data is lost by downloading and reuploading, and I can't risk it.

[KAM]

You are correct and I believe this is the expected behavior.  I don't believe Google's Migration tool in beta helps either (https://support.google.com/workspacemigrate/answer/9222862?hl=en) There are commercial tools for this.  Check out CloudM and BitTitan, for example.

Also, you might look at using Drive File Stream now Drive for Desktop.  I have NOT read this but for example, https://park-school.s3.amazonaws.com/files/resources/googlecloudfilestreamdetailedinstructionspc.pdf

-KAM

[CalebSpring]

Have you tried sharing the folder in your personal account with your new workspace account? After doing this you should be able to move entire folders into a Google Drive Shared drive. Here is a link that explains what Shared drives are https://support.google.com/a/answer/7212025

[crap]

Yeah, unfortunately none of those options work and I don't want to have to expose our business data to 3rd party tools (or pay for them for that matter).  

This is a big hurdle to adopting workspace unfortunately.

[KAM]

@crap Drive for Desktop is not 3rd party.  It's an official Google Tool. -KAM

[crap]

I was referring to CloudM and BitTitan.

[micah_noble]

Had the same issue and what we ended up doing is separating sheets, slides and docs that had specific formatting, formulas and scripts into one folder that the old user shared with the new account. The new account then made a copy of those files and renamed them and yes there were a lot of files and and yes it was a painfully long process. We would have looked at another migration tool first but we made the mistake of following supports advice that we could just download everything and set the files to reupload as docs, slides and sheets. That's when we discovered that multiple formulas were corrupted, scripts lost and formatting was a mess.  That was followed by a follow up chat with support to learn that migrating from your personal google account to a workspace account is apparently not a feature.  I'd complain more about this process but I'm saving my energy for my next rant about the abomination that is called Collaborative Inboxes, a group email solution that could only be called that by someone who has never used email. 

[crap]

Oof, this doesn't bode well for us 🙂  Thanks for sharing your story!  It's very good to know that the data loss wouldn't be limited to the comment attribution.  I was very close to just pulling the trigger, but knowing what else we might lose, I'm glad I didn't.

[paul_lees]

@crap Check out rclone, it's free and can move files from one Google Drive to another. If you want a paid service try movebot.io they provide a service where they will do the migration for you.

[crap]

Here's what I've tried (including rclone).

I'd like to migrate to workspace for the shared drive feature, but there's no way to do that gracefully. Here's what I've tried:

• Downloading everything and re-uploading - This loses attribution information on the comments in google docs/sheets/etc. You can see the comments, but they're missing the account of the user who made them. It's a lossy procedure.
• Creating a shared drive and sharing with my personal account - You can't transfer whole folders to a shared drive from a personal account. That makes it a non-starter because I have thousands of folders in a complex hierarchy. I can't manually copy all the individual files and folders.
• rclone from personal drive to shared drive - This also looses attribution information despite re-creating the complex hierarchy and using server side transfers.
• Transfer ownership of folder containing ALL data to workspace owner - You can't do this.

So rclone doesn't help here. movebot.io seems to be a dead link :<

[paul_lees]

movebot.io link works for me.

[crap]

It totally does!  Sorry, I must have messed something up.  Thanks for pointing that out.  I wonder if they’re able to preserve the attribution data.  I’ll check them out!  I’m hoping I won’t have to expose our data to third parties. 

[Dustin_Gleaton]

Hey Crap,

Just a note from my end. From my understanding, you would need to be the workspace super admin, and the folders would need to be within that domain.

Here is the Google verbiage on this: 

https://support.google.com/a/answer/7374057?hl=en#zippy=%2Cmove-drive-folders-to-shared-drives-as-an...

[Dustin_Gleaton]

I would also look into CloudM. It's what we use at our company when doing client migration projects. 

https://support.cloudm.io/hc/en-us/articles/360008400500-Migrating-to-or-from-Google-Shared-Drives#:...

[crap]

Thanks for the tip, I'll check it out!

[slamorte]

Did you find a solution?

I have the same need but I have Business Starter so I don't even have a shared drive. All I want to do is change folder owner. 

[paul_lees]

@slamorte 

GAM - https://github.com/jay0lee/GAM can do this via the command line

We can "change owner" via the UI in Patronum. https://www.patronum.io

[misapolakova]

You can change owner for files outside of the organization to a user inside the org?

[paul_lees]

That is not possible within Google Drive. The only way to change ownership of an externally owned file is to move it to a Google Shared Drive.

[douglasunusual]

It is still impossible to upgrade from a Google personal account to a Google business starter without converting every file to a .doc first?

[KAM]

@douglasunusual Hmm, I'm guessing without Shared Drives, that's hard.  Have you looked at a commercial tool like CloudM? -KAM

[douglasunusual]

Thanks for the reply. Seems overkill for a few gig. They do not let you buy the service without a quote so i doubt they are going to be the few pennies that it should be.

[douglasunusual]

Found a solution -

Add everything to an export folder and share it

Go here https://gsuitetips.com/tools/copy-folder/

Make a copy of the shared folder.

I spent about 12 hours before i found this. So many other solutions seem to work but actually convert to docx before moving the file.

[KAM]

@douglasunusual good find. I usually use a shared drive because that moves the files and keeps all the same doc ids.  Your need was just to avoid conversion!  -KAM

[markus9911]

I am trying to do the same as OP for a long time. Migrate over folders/files from personal google account (Google Drive) to my Google Workspace business account.

I figure out it works with rclone server side copy where the Google Docs format stays the same (without converting it to DOCX, etc.). But versioning or version history gets lost. Even worse, all comments get lost as well.

rclone copy gd-mysource:/transferfolder  gd-mytarget:/testtarget -P --drive-server-side-across-configs --fast-list

1,5 years later .. do we have already a solution for this?