Copy shared Google Drive files and folders to My Drive?


👤 Diwas Poudel    🕒 23 Oct 2021    📁 TECH

Google Drive is a free Cloud Storage Service provided by Google. Individuals, as well as companies, can use this free platform for Storage purposes. The company uses Google Drive to share docs, excels, videos, etc. to the employee so that employees can access those shared projects resource from anywhere at any time and have real-time updates facilities.

This shared contains is located inside the "Shared With me" section in google drive. This contains files, folders, applications, shared by someone (friends, family, and coworkers) to you. Suppose someone shared your files and folder then it will appear in your "Shared with me" section. So Google Drive is popular nowadays as a file-sharing service.

We are happy with these google drive features. But some times of using this service, you like to save or copy from "Shared with me" to "My Drive".When trying to do this you are not able to perform them accurately. Also, I know that when the owner of the shared documents deletes or changed permission of shared documents then I will not be able to access them.

So, searching a lot on the internet, found a solution that let shared documents copy into "My Drive" so that I can access them at any time even if the files are deleted or change permission to the file by the file owner.

Method 1: Copy from "Shared with me" to "My Drive" by Downloading and uploading to My Drive

In the above methods, we have to request the owner of the shared files and folder to change the permission to either Editor or Owner. If he/she is a friend or co-worker then they will grant access to you. But sometimes it is difficult to ask them to grant permission. If so then is method is best for you.

Steps:

1. Right-click on Shared Folders or files.

2. Click on Download

Downloading Status will be shown in the bottom right corner.

3. Goto My Drive

4. Right-click on the empty area and click on "Upload files" for file or "Upload folder" for the folder.

5. Select the location of the downloaded files and click on "Open".

This will start uploading and at the bottom right corner will show the status of the upload.

That's it.

Method 2: Copy from "Shared with me" to "My Drive" using the "Make a Copy" option

If direct parents of "Shared with me" are files then you just select files, right-click on them and select "Make a Copy". This will make a copy at " My Drive".

If its direct parent is a shared folder, then go into that folder, select all files you want to copy, right-click on selected files and select "Make a Copy". This will make a copy at "My Drive".Later you can go to "My Drive" and manage those files into a folder or whatever you like to do.

Note: Google Has Removed the feature for Making copies of the entire folder so only Make a Copy for files work

Method 3: Copy from "Shared with me" to "My Drive" Using Drive for Desktop

Drive for Desktop is a desktop application for Windows and macOS which seamlessly helps to sync local files/folders with web google drive. You can use Google Drive Desktop to copy files and folders from "Shared with me" to "My Drive".

Steps:
1 Download from this link and install it and link with Google Account
 For this to work your web google drive and Google Drive Desktop must have connected to the same account.

Also Read: How to use and sync a local folder/files to google drive desktop?

After doing that you will find Google Drive at Windows Explorer. Open the drive, again open the Drive folder, and then you will get all content of Google Drive Desktop. But you will not find any "Shared with me" folder here. But we can do hack with step 2

2 Goto content of "Shared with me"  and select your favorites folder/files. In this case, I have selected the "Computer Engineering" Folder. And I want to move it to My Drive. So, Just right-click on "Computer Engineering" then select " Add to My Drive".This will create a copy on your My Drive. So, got computer engineering inside "My Drive". That's it? Hay Hay wait. If you do this much, then you can open that Shortcut Computer Engineering folder from My Drive unless the Owner has not deleted those files /folders. So, it's better to do something. Which is mentioned in step 3.

3 Goto Google Desktop and open the "Computer Engineering" shortcut and copy its content and create a new folder paste it inside that folder.

That's it. Now this content will automatically sync with web Google Drive.

Method 4: Copy from "Share with me" to "My Drive" Using the gsuitetips website

GSuiteTips is a website that provides useful tricks and tips around google workspace. It has one of the useful features called the Copy Folder feature which allows copying files from one folder of google drive to another. So, using this we can copy files/folders from Shared with Me to My Drive. 

Steps:

1 Goto to the link by clicking on it. (https://gsuitetips.com/tools/copy-folder/)

2 Scroll drop a little bit and click on Sign in with Google Button.

gsuitetips-signin

3 Choose your desired account to continue to Overdrive. 

chose-desire-account
fig. choose your desired account. 

 

4 Click on Allow button to allow Overdrive to access your Google Account.

click-allow

5 Then scroll a little bit and you will get a screen as below.

source-folder-destination-folder-googledrive

6 Just click on Source Folder and select Shared with me tab and Select the desired folder.

select-source-folder

7 Click on the Destination Folder button and then Select your destination folder in My Drive.

destination-folder-select

8 Give the name of the new folder name where you want to put the copied content and check the Copy Files option and click on 'Preview' button. Wait sometime...

new-folder-name-gsuiteips

9 Then click on the Go button. This will automatically copy without complication.

go-button-for-transfer

Goto your destination path and find the newly created folder and you will find the shared content there.

Method 5: Copy from "Shared with me" to "My Drive" Using Google Collab

Google Colab is a google collaboration product for research purposes that helps to execute python code from a web browser and no need to install it on your computer as everything runs on Google Server. It is useful in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Google Colab notebooks are saved to Google Drive so that team can works on the same document at once. Must have good internet collection to execute code.

Step:

1. Open Google Colab. Click here

2. Login to Google Account 

google-colab-signin
fig. sign in google colab

 

3. Goto Google Drive tab and click on "New Notebook"

notebook-google-drive-google-colab
fig. Create new notebook

 

4. Click on Connect. This will connect with your google drive. It may take few seconds to Allocating, Connecting and Initializing Resources.

5. Click on the folder to view google drive

connect-google-colab
fig. click connect to google drive and select folder to view drives

6. Click on "Google Drive Icon".

This will mount your google drive Icon. For this, you have to give permission to this notebook of google collab. Now you can access google drive inside google colab.

allow-google-colab-to-access-google-drive
fig. Allow Google Colab to access google drive

7. Click on Code and then paste the below code in the box as shown below.

from google.colab import drive
drive.mount('/content/drive')

8. Click on the Run Cell icon. Or just press Ctrl + Enter to execute this python script.

script
fig. Paste Script and Run it

9. Then it will ask you to Enter your authorization code, so click on the link shown and then sign in with your google drive account and then copy the text.

url link

Then select your google account and then click on sign-in and then from the next screen copy the link.

google-drive-access-previledge.

10. Paste the code and press Enter

paste authorization-code and press enter
fig. paste authorization code and press Enter

After few seconds, you will get a success message like

mounted success message
Caption

11. On the left side, press the Refresh folder button.

As soon as we do, will get the drive folder in the tree view as shown below

drive-content
fig. A refresh button is clicked, the drive folder appear in the tree view

When you expand you will get all google drive content except the "Shared with me" folder.

12. Now, Go inside the "Shared with me" folder and right-click on the folder/file, and select "Add to Drive". Here, I have added the "ComputerEngineering" Folder to the "Add to Drive"

13. This will create a shortcut at "My Drive" with the folder name. In my case, Shortcut of ComputerEngineering Folder is created in "My Drive".

14 Now, click on the code. This will bring a text box and their type:

!cp -r '/actual_file_path/' '/destination_file_path/'

15 Click on Run Cell and then content will move to the destination file path.