add to my drive feature (shift +z) ability please

[morfeas99]

We are using GSUITE services 5 years now and "add to my drive" feature is really essential so as my new partners see our main shared files. 

Please find a way or a possible alternative to have this feature back. I am afraid that if is not possible we will have a serious problem in the future regarding the renewal of your services.

Thank you in advance  for taking action to revive this much-needed feature!

[icrew]

Hi @morfeas99 :

The feature still exists, but it's now "Add Shortcut to Drive"

See https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2021/12/timeline-update-for-migration-of-multi-location-driv... for more on the details of this change.

Hope that helps, at least a little,

Ian

[morfeas99]

Thanks @icrew  for your advice, but the main issue is that we use the same location for all our files e.g. G:\My Drive\SharedFolder within our Management system. So with the shortcut feature we have different location for my partners e.g. G:\My Drive\"xxxxxxxx"\SharedFolder and that's the real problem.

Thanks again for your help.

Panagiotis

[icrew]

Hi @morfeas99 

It sounds like Shared Drives might be a better solution in this case. They also have the benefit of not being associated with any one account, so you don’t risk losing important data when you delete accounts as people leave the organization.

It’s also now possible to move whole folder trees into shared drives as an admin. See https://support.google.com/a/answer/7374057

Cheers,

Ian

[mguadarrama]

I have the same problem, I have +80 users who use drive for desktop and cannot add the shared folders to their drive, I need the SHIFT Z function to return and direct access is NOT a solution

[StephenHind]

@mguadarrama they just need to add Shortcuts to the folders to My Drive then then can see the folders in Drive for Desktop and make then available offline if necessary.

[icrew]

Yup, or, as I suggested above, move the folders into Shared Drives, and they can access them from Google Drive for Desktop without even needing to add the shortcut to MyDrive.

[mguadarrama]

I'm sorry but this is not a solution, a shortcut gives me a longer path and when I have many subfolders windows can no longer read files because of the path so large that it becomes

the difference between a shortcut and add them to my drive, the file path is longer with the shortcut

[StephenHind]

@mguadarrama Google can't fix Windows' limitations (I can't believe that Windows still has this limitation), sorry, so the only other options is to put them in a Shared Drive as @icrew suggested.

[jkayser]

@StephenHind , I'm afraid it's not a Windows-only limitation. We are using MacOS and now we are struggling with this change of criteria. Basically the path to a file is different than the real one working with Shortcuts instead of Adding the folder to your Drive (picture attached).

Also: if someone in our organization renames a folder on root level, this change only affects his/her own "shortcut" making impossible mantain consistency in our workflow.

[ckweb]

My two cents are simply this:

Who decided that exchanging the original 'move' feature to using 'shortcuts' was a brilliant idea? It's obvious this created problems for a lot of people, enough for short articles to spring up when Google made this switch.

And does Google have people monitoring feedback when changes like this are introduced? I know they do try to better their products and services, but it seems that they also enjoy complicating simple things that seemingly worked just fine the way they were before.

Case and point, I commented on a similar option removed from Chrome called 'simplify print' several years ago. At the time I suggested they bury features they wish to remove within their products' settings so any user who uses a feature can activate and use it again. So if they then see that no one's really using that feature anymore, they can go ahead and remove it at that point. ✅

[rscamerin]

It is also very important to my company to have the "Add to my Drive" function using Shift Z. Our system connect to shared XLSX files and with this new 'feature' it simply cannot do that. Please Google, go back to the old configuration.

[gatag74717]

my backup app was not working !

Why ? shortcuts is FILE (special file created by google), don't map data like "Add to my Drive"

And what happens for user ? App instead backup Folder like before, now it  backup "shortcuts sh*t file"

who proposed "shortcuts " idea should be fired

[marycer54]

Also while google tried changing my shared folders into a link, THEY took everything that was not mine out of the shared folder, deleted some files from all accounts AND missplaced everything in MY DRIVE

[Snyg]

Moving to shortcuts was a bad move. ☹️

It removed essential capabilities from Google Drive. In multiple cases I used folders as tags. It gave me a hierarchy of tags. It was great. I could 'tag' a file (or a whole folder) with different tags (add to different folders). Many files belong to multiple topics (folders/tags). That simply does NOT work anymore. 

Put in another way: The old way gave me a true multi-taxonomy system. Shortcuts do not give me this - and neither do shared drives 😠

[icrew]

For that sort of labeling use case https://support.google.com/a/users/answer/10898474?hl=en might be a good alternative.

[bill_pier3]

No - you were misusing a filesystem to effect a metadata construct, understandable given that a mechanism did not exist.

Now Data Labels exist as a metadata feature in Drive.  This is the appropriate tool to use for this metadata purpose.

[Snyg]

H ibill_pier3. Thanks for your response.

I beg to differ with your bold claim about misusing a filesystem.

First of all, I am convinced that Google originally did intend its folders to be used that way. I haven’t checked for a google statement of the intended use of Google Drive folders, but it is very difficult to explain Google’s reasoning for the original design of folders otherwise.

Second - I think there actually are multi-taxonomy/hierarchy file systems in use 'out there'.

Google’s implementation was a beauty the way it originally worked. I know, it had some challenges: some people were confused by a file ‘existing’ in two ‘places’ - and also, it may have been a challenge for Google to synchronize such a system with, for instance, MS windows (DOS) file system.

Third - I dare say, any folder structure is a metadata construct.

Labels:

I will take another look at labels. Initially I understood that:

1. I could not navigate my files by a number of tag hierarchies - as I would earlier be able to navigate my files by a number of folder hierarchies
2. An ordinary user could not create his own new hierarchy of tags to organize selected folders and files according to a topic hierarchy he would work with for a given task the next 6 months.
3. I could not drag-and-drop items between tag hierarchies (to add the item (file or folder) to another tag in another hierarchy/branch (see next bullet).
4. I could not associate a given tag in one tag hierarchy with a given tag in another hierarchy (yes, challenged by cycles as well as recursions - but it was possible with the original folder system)
5. … and in fact, tags could just not be organized in proper hierarchies
6. only files, not folders could be associated with tags
7. … and many more shortcomings

I will take one more look at the label system. I believe it can be useful for other use cases - but I fear it will disappoint me when it comes to associating files (and folders) with an arbitrary number of entries in an arbitrary number of hierarchies.

[mw571]

Replying to add one more voice to the thread.  For our office, the shortcuts aren't working for multiple reasons:

-Most of our files are not conducive to streaming.  We have model sizes approaching 1 G
-Programs like Numbers on MAC need to save to a local drive for versions to work.
-Even with figuring out how to keep files available for off line use, they don’t load correctly or can’t be saved.

I really don’t understand the benefit of this new system.

m

[dgokharu]

Even if we migrate to "Shared Drive", the folder hierarchy visibility is not possible when you want to give access to a lower level sub-folder or item. This does not allow us to set up folder structure by Subject Matter instead we are forced to set up 'workspaces' that revolve around user groups/hierarchies.

For example: If I have a folder structure as follows:

1. HR Files  > General Benefits Forms
2. HR Files > Safety Information
3. HR Files > Employee Files > Person A folder; Person B folder

And I want to give access to a group of people (X) to (1), I want them to be able to see that "General Benefit Forms" is under "HR Files", they cannot see that there are other folder under "HR Files" but I want them to be able to see the hierarchy.

[schajuli]

I wanted to combine various data vaults via shared drives for third party applications but due to the fact that the shortcuts are not working like real symlinks it's hard to achieve in windows now. Also due to the fact that mklinks are not possible within the new client as the files don't seem to physically exist. So though they sync and are "there", it's a whole different story for apps ... don't know how to workaround this now ...