Want advanced Google Workspace features for your business?
After you share a file, you can stop sharing at any time. You can also control if people that you've shared with can change or share your file.
Tip: When you update permissions for a file that you share from My Drive and the person who you share with doesn't have permissions, you can update permissions for:
- The folder that contains the file
- Only the file itself
Stop sharing a file
Important:
- If you share a file with people, the owner and anyone with edit access can change sharing permissions and share the file.
- If you don't want anyone to publicly access your file, stop publishing the file.
- Find the file or folder in Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Sheets or Google Slides.
- Open or select the file or folder.
- Click Share or Share
.
- Find the person you want to stop sharing with.
- To the right of their name, click the down arrow
Remove access.
- Click Save.
.
Remove access.When you change an item's general access to 'Restricted', only people with access can open the file.
- Find the file or folder in Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Sheets or Google Slides.
- Open or select the file or folder.
- Click Share
.
- Under 'General access', click the down arrow
.
- Select Restricted.
- Click Done.
If you delete a shared file that you own:
- People that can view, comment or edit can make a copy of the file until you permanently delete it.
- To permanently delete the file, click on the file in your bin, and then select Delete forever
. Learn more about deleting files.
. If you delete a shared file that you don’t own:
- The file will be removed from your Drive, but other collaborators can still access it.
- To get the file back, open a link to the file
File
File Limit how your files are shared
Prevent people from downloading, printing or copying your filePeople with edit access to your files can:
- Share the file with others.
- Add or remove people from the file.
- Change access permissions to the file.
- Copy, print or download the file.
Important: You can't apply this setting to a folder, but you can apply it to individual files in the folder.
To prevent viewers and commenters from printing, copying or downloading your file:
- Find the file or folder in Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Sheets or Google Slides.
- Select one or more files that you want to limit.
- Click Share or Share
- At the top, click Settings
.
- Untick Viewers and commenters can see the option to download, print and copy.
.Important: You can limit how people share, print, download and copy within Google Drive, Docs, Sheets and Slides, but you can't stop how others share the file content in other ways.
If you're sharing a file, the owner and anyone with editor access can change the permissions and share the file. To prevent others from sharing your file:
- Open the file in Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Sheets or Google Slides.
- Click Share or Share
- At the top, click Settings
- Untick Editors can change permissions and share.
Important: If you prevent sharing of a folder, it only applies to the folder. To prevent sharing the files inside, you have to change this setting for the files inside.
More options with work or school Google Accounts
Give someone permissions to a file for a limited timeSet an expiry date for a file
- Open a file in Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Sheets or Google Slides.
- Click Share
find the user that you'd like to give temporary permissions to.
- If you haven't shared the file with that person yet, add the user's email address and click Send or Share. At the top right of the document, click Share again.
- Next to the person's name, click the down arrow
- Next to 'Access expires', click a date to set as the expiry date. Choose a date within one year of the current date.
- Click Save.
Change share settings for Google Forms
Google Forms often have different sharing options from other kinds of files.
