Use Vault to search Google Drive, Meet & Sites

As part of your Google Workspace data eDiscovery projects, you can use Google Vault to search for items in Google Drive, including shared drives, Google Meet recordings, and new Google Sites sites. You can search titles and the contents of supported file types. You can also preview items and export your search results.

Things to know before you search

Before you search, we recommend you review the supported data types for Drive, Meet, and Sites and the Vault search FAQ.

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Search for files in Drive

1. Sign in to https://vault.google.com.
2. Click Matters. You search for data in matters, which are workspaces for your Vault projects. Matters let you group related holds, searches, and exports together. Matters don't restrict what data you can search—all data that you are allowed to access is searchable from any matter.
3. If the matter you want to run the search query in exists, click it to open it. Otherwise, create a matter:
   1. Click Create.
   2. Enter a name for the matter and, optionally, a description.
   3. Click Create.

   The Search tab opens.

4. For the service, select Drive.
5. Select the source data to search:
   • All data—Search all messages in your organization.
   • Held data—Search only messages on hold for the matter.
6. Select the entity to search:
   • Specific accounts—Enter up to 5,000 account email addresses.
   • Organizational unit—Search all accounts in a specific organizational unit. In the dialog that opens, select an organizational unit.

     If you choose an organizational unit with child organizational units, accounts in the child organizational units are also searched. The organizational unit must have fewer than 5,000 members, including child organizational units.

   • Shared drives—Search one or more shared drives. 

     Select the shared drives and click Add. If you have many shared drives and the list is paginated, your selection is preserved as you change pages. If you check the Select all box at the top of the list, it selects only the current page. You can also search the list by a member’s email or by the shared drive’s name.

     1. To filter the list by the email address of a member:
        1. Click Find by member email.
        2. Enter one or more accounts.
        3. Click Find.
     2. To filter the list by the name of the shared drive (if your organization has less than 1,000 shared drives):
        1. Click Filter by name and enter letters in the name of the shared drive. For example, pr matches shared drives named “Sales projects”, “Marketing Projects”, and “Product management”, but not “Repairs”.

           The paginated list automatically updates as you add letters.

        2. Check the box or boxesclick Enter.

     3. To find the shared drive by name (if your organization has more than 1,000 shared drives):
        1. Click Find by shared drive name.
        2. Enter one or more words in the name of the shared drive. Note: Words must be exact and complete. For example, marketing, projects matches shared drives named “Marketing projects Q4’22” and “Projects for marketing”. It doesn’t match a shared drive named “Marketing project archive” because “project” doesn’t end with an “s”. Similarly, ma doesn’t match any of these shared drives because it’s only part of a word, not the complete word.
        3. Click Find.
   • Sites—Search for sites by URL.
     1. In the dialog that opens, enter one or more published site URLs, separated by commas. The URL format is sites.google.com/domain/site-name. Note: You can’t search by page URL, only site URL. You can’t search by site URL for sites shared by external organizations.
     2. Click Find.
     3. In the list of sites, select the sites you want to include in your search and click Add.
7. (Optional) If you search accounts or an organizational unit, to include files in shared drives, click Include items from shared drives .
8. (Optional) Select a time zone.
9. (Optional) Enter a range for Date modified.
   • If you enter a start date, Vault returns all items modified on or after that date.
   • If you enter an end date, Vault returns all items modified on or before that date.
10. (Optional) In Terms, enter one or more search terms:
    • To search for one or more keywords in the content, title, or metadata, enter words separated by spaces. For example, project goals.
    • To search for a phrase, put the words in quotes. For example, "project goals".
    • To search by account, sharing, item name, item type, or modification date, use search operators.

    Search terms can't exceed 2,000 characters.

11. (Optional) To retrieve versions of files created in Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Sites, Drawings, and Vids saved on a specific date, enter a Version date. For details, on this page go to the section on version history.
12. (Optional) To search only client-side encrypted files or exclude them from your search, click Advanced search options and select which files to search (default is all files). Note: This option is available only if Google Workspace Client-side encryption is turned on.
13. Click one of the following:
    • Search—Run your search and return a list of items that match your query.
    • Export—Directly export the search results and skip the search results preview. Learn more about exports.
14. After your search or export completes, you can take the following actions:
    • To edit your search, click Expand.
    • To open a preview of an item, click the item. Note: In your results list, client-side encrypted files have an Encrypted  icon next to them.
    • To create an export of your search results, click Export. Learn more about exports.
    • To save your query, click Save. Learn more about saved queries.
    • To clear all fields and start a new search, click Clear.

Preview search results

After you run a search, you can review and download the items that matched your query.

Preview is supported for Google files such as Docs, Sheets, Slides, Sites, Drawings, and Vids, as well as other common types such as PDF, DOCX, and XLSX. You can't preview ZIP, binary, video, or encrypted files. In Google files, you can't preview comments, suggested edits, or revision history.

Note: The Google Sheets IMAGE function can reference an image by URL, such as "https://www.example.com/images/logo.jpg". When you preview the spreadsheet in Vault, the image is retrieved in real time from the source. For images uploaded or inserted in the spreadsheet, Vault stores and displays the image available at the date specified in your search.

1. To preview an item, in the search results list, click the item.
   • For supported file types, a preview of the item opens.
   • For file types that aren't supported in preview, Vault shows an error but you can still download the item.
2. To download an item from the preview, click More  Download.