Using Shared Drives

This content is borrowed from Google's What can you do with shared drives?. You can read more by visiting their site.

Create a Shared Drive and Add Members

1. Open Google Drive.
2. In the left navigation, click Shared Drives.
3. At top, click New.
4. Enter a name.
5. Click Create.
6. At the top, under the Shared Drive name, click +Add Members.
7. Add people using their names or email addresses.
   • (Optional) To change the permission level you grant for a member, click the Down arrow next to Full, and choose a new permission. You can grant Edit, Comment, or View access only, if you prefer.
   • (Optional) Enter a message to send as a notification.
   • (Optional) If you don’t want to send notifications, select "Skip sending notifications".
8. Click the Send (to send notifications) or Add (if you checked off "Skip sending notifications" above).

Transfer Your Files

To move a file that already exists into a Shared Drive, you must have Full permissions in the Shared Drive, and also be the owner of the file. (Ownership of the file won't matter once you've added it to the shared drive, so this will be the last time you need to worry about who the owner is.) You can drag and drop the file from the main area of your Google Drive into your Shared Drive in the left panel, or right-click on the file and use the Move to... menu to change the its location.

Sharing Files 

Any files you put in Shared Drives are automatically shared with members of the Shared Drive. You can also share Shared Drive files with people outside of that group. See our page on Sharing Files and Folders for more information.

What kinds of files should stored in Google Drive?

Google apps for education is a cloud-based service. It can store just about any kind of files, but we recommend that you store documents and files that you need to edit collaboratively or share with other users. Please visit Hampshire College’s Data Security Policy for more details on data sensitivity classification levels.