Use Vault to search Google Drive

Vault searches Drive for all items owned by and directly shared with the users specified in your search entry. Vault search can include items in a shared drive that are directly shared with a user, regardless of whether the user is a member of that shared drive. Vault search doesn't include folders or Drive shortcuts.

Yes, you can search selected shared drives directly or, when you search by specific accounts or organizational units, you can choose to include results from shared drives.

For all items, you can search the title, owner, date last modified, and other metadata.

For supported file types, you can search for words and phrases in the contents of files. Vault indexes the first 100 pages of text files and the first 10 pages of text in image PDFs.

You can search text within the following file types:

• Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms, including open comments but not suggested edits
• Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint
• .pdf
• .html
• .txt
• .rtf
• OpenOffice™ XML
• Wireless Application Protocol (.wap)
• Wireless Markup Language (.wml)
• Google Earth (.kml)

Vault doesn't index the content of video, audio, image, or binary files.

You can preview the following file types:

• Files created with Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, and Google Drawings
• Uploaded files such as .docx, .pdf, and .xlsx

In some Google Docs editors, users can link a file to another file. For example, in a Google Docs document you can insert a chart that's linked to data in a Google Sheets spreadsheet. Whenever the spreadsheet is updated, the chart in the document is also updated.

When you search files in Drive, Vault returns only the files that match your search criteria. If those files are linked to files that don't match your query, the linked files aren't included in your results.

No. You can search only the most recent version of a file. However, you can enter a version date as part of your search. When you enter a version date, Vault searches the current version of the file, but you preview and export the contents of the last version saved before 12:00 AM UTC on the date. Versioning is supported only in Google Drive for Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drawings. 

Some properties are reported for the current version, no matter what version date you specify. These properties include the title, who it was shared with, when it was last modified, and other data in Vault’s metadata.xml file.

Version snapshots include comments, subject to the following criteria:

• Open comments are included only if your organization has comment or edit access to the document. Comments aren’t included if you only have view access.
• An open individual comment (one with no replies) is included if: 1) the comment was created as of the version date, and 2) the commented text existed in that version (even if the commented text is now deleted). A comment isn’t included in versions from before the comment was created.
• An open comment thread (one with replies) is included in its entirety if: 1) the first comment was created as of the version date, and 2) the commented text existed in that version (even if the commented text is now deleted). For example, if a comment thread has two messages that were created on October 1 and October 5, a search with the version date of October 2 contains both comments even though the October 5 comment didn’t exist at the time.
• Edited comments are included as they currently exist, not how they were at the version time.
• Resolved or deleted comments aren’t included in a version, even if the comment was open at the version time.

No. You can't search the top organizational unit. Select a child organizational unit or individual accounts. You can search Drive for up to 5,000 accounts total (as individual accounts or members of organizational units).