Deleted workspace account lost files on other user shared folder

[visegradi]

Dear community,

We have the following situation. We had a "user A" account created in workspace. This user has created on somebody else's "user B" google drive a folder FA and also added some files there and others had files there too where the user A also edited things. Now this user A was deleted on workspace (actually the whole workspace was deleted about 2 weeks ago) but before the accounts were deleted a full takeout was requested by user A.

Now the user B says that the folder FA, which was created by user A account, has disappeared with all the contents (independently of who has created the files). User A has checked the takeout contents and nothing was there from this folder FA of User B drive.

How can user B recover the folder FA and all the contents?

Thank you in advance!

[icrew]

If it's been less than 20 days since you deleted the userA account, the best bet is to recover it. See https://support.google.com/a/answer/1397578?hl=en

As more explanation as to what happened, Google myDrive has a deeply-broken file ownership model. If userA creates a folder or file in myDrive, they own that file or folder, regardless of who owns the folder that contains that file or folder. So, when the userA account is deleted, all of their files and folders get deleted, even if they're in use by other folks.

Yes, that's stupid, and it's been broken for the entire 10+ years that myDrive has existed. Fortunately, Google Shared Drives work much more sensibly (in that anything put in a Shared Drive belongs to the organization that owns the Shared Drive, not any one user). That's by far the better choice for any content that needs to stick around beyond any one user's time at the organization.

If it's been more than 20 days since you deleted the account, the data created by UserA is gone. (You could try asking support for help, but they'll likely tell you the same thing). To find the files that were in folders that UserA created, see the "Learn why files go missing" section of https://support.google.com/drive/answer/1716222#zippy=%2Cfind-a-file-you-dont-think-you-deleted . Each owner will need to do their own "is:unorganized" search. This is commonly referred to as the "orphaned files" problem.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but hopefully that helps a little.

Cheers,

Ian

[incous]

Even if I change owner of a folder, all the file/subfolder still belong to old owner. How can I change owner recursively?

[KAM]

@incous Have you considered using a shared drive and moving everything to that?  Otherwise, definitely look at GAM: https://www.ditoweb.com/2021/03/using-open-source-google-apps-manager-to-administer-google-workspace... -KAM