Being able to control your file-sharing options in Google Drive is an important part of keeping your files secure. Here’s how to do it. Google Drive serves as a great tool for sharing documents with other people. However, you can share sensitive content and prevent people from sharing, downloading, copying, printing, or changing permissions to access your files.
Here we will see how to restrict the sharing options on your Google Drive files.
Read: How to Grant and Restrict Permissions in Google Docs
How to Restrict Sharing Options in Google Drive
Restricting the way you share your files on Google Drive is a straightforward process. You can do this through the Settings section of Google Drive. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to prevent your Shared members from commenting, printing, copying, or uploading your file:
- Open Google Drive or any other Google Drive app.
- Select the file you want to restrict and right-click on it.
- Click Share.
- At the top right, click Settings.
- Uncheck the Allow according to your restrictions box.
- Click Save.
It’s important to remember that if you have restricted a folder, the permission changes only apply to the folder. If you want to restrict files inside a folder, you need to manually change the settings of the files inside. Plus, if you’ve ever given someone permission to edit a file or folder, Google allows them to request file-sharing permission.
When users have access to the editor, they can:
- Share a file with others.
- Add or remove specific people from the file.
- Copy, print or download the file.
When an editor tries to download, print, or copy a shared file without editor access, these options appear to be grayed out and unavailable.
Control your content in your Google Drive
While you control how people access your files, you can also control who shares files with you. You can protect yourself on Google Drive by preventing users from sharing files with you, deleting files previously shared with you, or you can simply block a user in Google Drive.