Turn Drive on or off for users

As a G Suite administrator, you can control who uses Google Drive in your organization. Just turn Drive on or off for those people in your Google Admin console. People who have Drive turned on can use it to store and share files from their account.

When Drive is turned off for a user, that user cannot access or create any Docs or Drive files 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 service back on, they can create and access documents again, including their old documents. In addition, users can't submit Google Forms that require them to share documents outside your organization if Drive is turned off.

To control who uses Drive in your organization

Before you begin: To turn the service on or off for a set of users, put their accounts in an organizational unit.

  1. Sign in to your Google Admin console.

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

  2. From the Admin console Home page, go to Appsand thenG Suiteand thenDrive and Docs.

  3. At the top right of the gray box, click Edit Service Compose.
    At the left, the top-level organization and any organizational units appear.

  4. To apply settings to individual organizational units, do the following: 

    • At the left, select the organizational unit that contains the users whose settings you want to change.
    • To change the setting, select On or Off.
    • To keep the setting the same, even if the parent setting changes, click Override.
    • If the organization's status is already Overridden, choose an option:
      Inherit—Reverts to the same setting as its parent.
      Save—Saves your new setting (even if the parent setting changes).

    Learn more about the organizational structure.

Changes typically take effect in minutes, but can take up to 24 hours. For details, see Admin console settings don't update.  

If you manage a large number of users or sync your LDAP directory

You can use access groups to turn on a service for specific users within an organizational unit. You turn off the service for the organization, and then add the users to an access group that has the service turned on. This lets you give users access to services without making changes to your organizational structure. Learn about access groups.

Next steps

After turning on Drive: Set up Google Drive for your team

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