Turn Drive and Docs on or off for users

As an administrator, you can turn Google Drive and Docs on or off for people in your organization.

People who have Drive and Docs turned on can do the following:

• Store and share files from their account.
• Upload files to rooms in the integrated Gmail experience. Learn more about integrated Gmail.
• Access and edit Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides.

People who have Drive and Docs turned off can't do the following:

• Access or create Drive files, Docs, Sheets, or Slides with their account. Other users who have access to that user's existing documents can continue to access the documents. If you turn the user's Drive and Docs service back on, they can create and access documents again, including their old documents.
• Submit Google Forms that require them to share documents outside your organization.
• Upload files to rooms in the integrated Gmail experience.

Note:

• If Drive and Docs is turned off, you can’t change file-sharing permissions.
• If the trust rules setting is turned on, rules still apply to users' files if you turn off Drive and Docs for them. For details about trust rules, go to Create and manage trust rules for Drive sharing.

To control who uses Drive in your organization

Before you begin: To turn a service on or off for certain users, put their accounts in an organizational unit (to control access by department) or add them to an access group (to allow access for users across or within departments).

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 WorkspaceDrive and Docs.
3. Click Service status.

4. To turn a service on or off for everyone in your organization, click On for everyone or Off for everyone, and then click Save.

5. (Optional) To turn a service on or off for an organizational unit:

   1. At the left, select the organizational unit.
   2. To change the Service status, select On or Off.
   3. Choose one:
      • If the Service status is set to Inherited and you want to keep the updated setting, even if the parent setting changes, click Override.
      • If the Service status is set to Overridden, either click Inherit to revert to the same setting as its parent, or click Save to keep the new setting, even if the parent setting changes.
        Note: Learn more about organizational structure.
6. To turn on a service for a set of users across or within organizational units, select an access group. For details, go to Use groups to customize service access.

Changes can take up to 24 hours but typically happen more quickly. Learn more

Next steps

After turning on Drive and Docs: Set up Google Drive for your team.

Related topics

• Turn a service on or off for Google Workspace users
• Manage access to services that aren't controlled individually
• Turn on or off new services by default
• Google Workspace for Education Core and Additional services