Restore a deleted user's Drive files

To restore files or emails for your own account, go to Find or recover a file.

As an administrator, you may be able to restore a deleted user's account and files if you deleted the account less than 20 days ago. When you delete a user, if you don't transfer files at the time, the user's files are deleted 20 days later. If you act quickly, you can restore the deleted user and transfer ownership of their files before they're permanently deleted.

If the user isn't deleted, learn how to Recover deleted files and folders for Drive users.

Restore Drive files from a deleted user

  1. Restore the deleted user.

    You have up to 20 days after a user is deleted to restore their account and data.

  2. Once the user is restored, transfer ownership of their files to an active user.

  3. Delete the user account of the original file owner.

Automatically keep shared files when someone leaves

When you keep files that teams use to collaborate in shared drives, the files are owned by the entire team. You don't need to worry about losing these files when someone leaves the organization.

Was this helpful?

How can we improve it?
Search
Clear search
Close search
Google apps
Main menu
13985624227817399225
true
Search Help Center
true
true
true