Get started: Drive setup guide for admins

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 certain users: Put their accounts in an organizational unit (to control access by department) or put them in an access group (to control 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. 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.

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

  5. To turn on or off a service only for users in an organizational unit:

    1. At the left, select the organizational unit.
    2. Select On or Off.
    3. To keep the service turned on or off even when the service is turned on or off for the parent organizational unit, click Override.
    4. 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 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 turn on a service for a group.
Changes typically take effect in minutes, but can take up to 24 hours. For details, see How changes propagate to Google services.  

Next steps

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

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