google-drive
What is the best way to allow a Google Drive user to edit documents but not delete them? Our organization has many files and would like to protect some less tech savvy users from disrupting numerous files/folders at once.
Are there administrator tools to do this?
Alternatively, is there a way to backup your folder structure in Google Drive? In case someone deletes many folders, we don't want to have to put back all the files from each owner's "My Drive".
That will remove it from a single folder while keeping it in all the other folders it was in.
It is possible to have a shared folder among employees of your organization so that everyone can use it to share files with one another without having the need of clicking on the "Share" link for individual files.
From the Support Page regarding what the "Incoming" and "Shared with me" buttons do:
The "Incoming" or "Shared with me" view in the left-hand side navigation lets you see the files and folders that other people have shared with you, beginning with the most recent.
Your organisation can then share a central folder with everyone in the organisation and use it to store files that would be available for everyone. Individual users would then receive a notification regarding the folder that has been shared to them, which they can then click on it to be directed to a special page that previews the items located within the folder. A blue button on the top right of the page can be clicked to add the shared folder to the person's individual drive.
More information about the sharing of files inside folders:
Moving a file or folder from a shared folder into My Drive (or any other folder) is a move and not a copy, so the moved content is removed from the shared folder. As a result:
- Users will no longer see the moved files or folders in the shared folder.
- Any permissions on the moved content that were inherited from the shared folder will be removed, and new permissions will be inherited from the destination folder (together with permissions explicitly set on a file or folder).
Best Answer
Giving edit access to Google Drive documents is sufficient. The way these files work, once they are shared with a user, the file will appear in their "Shared with me" list
If they remove or delete a file from this list, it will not remove the document from any other user's list, nor will it destroy the file. Only the owner can trash a document.
Learn more about trashing documents here: http://support.google.com/drive/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2494934&p=restore_trash_collab
If the owner trashes a document, they can get it back from their Trash folder:
Folders and file structures behave the same way, if regular editors remove these it will disappear from their "Shared with me" list but it only affects them, not the rest of the collaborators.