Control file sharing in Chat

Supported editions for this feature: Business Plus; Enterprise Standard and Enterprise Plus; Education Standard and Education Plus; Enterprise Essentials Plus. Compare your edition

As your organization’s administrator, you can control how your users share files and images in Google Chat. You can set sharing rules for your entire organization. Or, set rules per department. You can also set rules for sharing with people outside of your organization.

About sharing in Chat

• When users share a file in Chat, the files are automatically scanned for viruses. If a virus is detected, the file is not shared.
• If you allow sharing with users outside of your organization but not with users inside your organization, your users can share files in spaces and messages not controlled by your organization.

Set file & image sharing for users

Before you begin: If you need to set up a department or team for this setting, go to Add an organizational unit.

Set file & image sharing for users

1. Sign in to your Google Admin console.

   Sign in using your administrator account (does not end in @gmail.com).

2. In the Admin console, go to Menu  AppsGoogle WorkspaceGoogle Chat.
3. Click Chat File Sharing.
5. For External filesharing, choose an option to specify what files users can share outside of your organization:
   • Allow all files—Users can share all types of files.
   • Images only—Users can only share images.
   • No files—Users can’t share any files.
6. For Internal filesharing, choose an option to specify what users can share within your organization.
7. Click Save. Or, you might click Override for an organizational unit.

   To later restore the inherited value, click Inherit. 

Related topics

• Send & share files in Google Chat messages