Google Drive – How to Copy All Files Between Google Apps Accounts

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I'm a superadministrator of Google Apps for Education. How do I copy all files from one user account to another without deleting the files from the first account?

I know there's a "transfer files" option, but I want to make a copy, not transfer.

Best Answer

I don't believe you can from the Admin Console. When you delete a user you have the option to transfer files to a different user, but that is obviously not what you want.

The Migrate data between Google Apps accounts support page from Google Says:

Drive files:

"Drive lets you manually download a file to your computer that you can then move to Drive in your new Google Apps account. You can also share individual documents with email addresses in your new account and then copy them. Alternatively, you can use the Drive REST API to export and import documents."

Other options:

  • Download all the users files and then upload them into the other account
  • Use Google Takeout, you'll have to be logged in as the original user and then upload them to the new user
  • Can you share the files between the users. The idea of Google Apps is to avoid having multiple copies of the same files and allowing users to collaborate
  • Check out Google Apps Script. There is a ton of drive related functions you can do with this. Here is a tutorial on Google Apps Script