Google-drive – How to move files from a personal Google Drive account to a Google Drive for Business account

dropboxgoogle-drive

I started off working in my personal Gmail account and now I wish to move everything into my Google Apps for Business account. I tried the following unsuccessfully:

  1. Using the Share → Is Owner does not work—gives an error about sharing. Strangely then it works if you share between Gmail accounts.

  2. I downloaded everything on PC drive, copied everything in another folder. Disconnected my personal account and connected to the business account. Then moved the contents of the folder to Drive and after re-synch, Google still memorised the owner and rights.

Best Answer

The following solution worked after hours of trying out things. I moved a folder which contains several sub-folders and files:

  1. Download all files on your machine using Google Drive installer. (I used Windows 7)
  2. Copy everything in your Dropbox folder on the same machine and allow it to sync online. (You need a Dropbox account for this step)
  3. Unshare the personal files with your business account from Gmail personal account
  4. Delete the files from drive on local machine or wait until they are deleted automatically via sync.
  5. Go to Dropbox online and change the folder name from within the web and allow this to fully sync on your local machine.
  6. On your local machine copy everything from your Dropbox folder to your Drive folder and you will notice that the folder icon does not show any more the blue user - this means that Google lost its reference to this folder/files
  7. Allow to sync online and you are done.

Make sure you reshare everything as all share settings are lost.

Related Topic