This permission extends to folders created after share access is granted, so be absolutely sure you know who has access, and what kind of access they have, to a high-level folder. That means someone with edit permissions on a folder can do anything-edit, move, delete, copy, etc.-to files and folders located inside it.

When you grant access to a Google drive folder, you're granting access to everything that lives inside that folder. Now that you know how to share documents and folders, and control what kind of access people have to them, it's important to know how subfolder permissions work in Google Drive. You can also control whether public access is restricted to view only, comment only, or edit permissions.īe careful if you choose to publicly share a document-it means there's no way of stopping unwanted guests from viewing, or potentially making changes to, your files. There are two kinds of link sharing: A fully public version that will list the document online, meaning it can be found by anyone who does the right Google search, and public but unlisted sharing that requires someone to be given the direct link. For folders, you can toggle between Edit/Sort/Add and View Only. Clicking on it opens the permissions menu ( Figure D), where you can set a document to be editable, comment only, or just viewed. If you opened the Share window (shown above in Figure C), you may have noticed a button with a pencil icon on the right side of the sharing screen. For a file, that means they can make changes, and for folders it means they can organize the folder, edit files, and add content. When you share a document or folder with someone, they have edit permissions by default.

How to change Google Drive sharing permissions If you plan to share anything other than specific documents, it's wise to understand a bit more about how sharing in Google Drive works. Nothing else in the directory where it's located will be visible to them.įolders, on the other hand, are a bit different, and sharing permissions can get tricky. Sharing a single document is fairly foolproof: The only thing the recipient gets access to is that single document you shared. In this example I shared a document, but the same steps apply for folders as well.

Merge folders in google drive