Restricts Users from Deleting Shared files

[Ysmaan]

Recently I was looking for a way to restrict users from deleting shared files with them even if they have the edit rights, in other words, for every user who wants to delete a file and/or folder an approval notification should be sent to the Admin to approve. Unfortunately, the feature is not available which imposes w huge risk of data being deleted by mistake.

Is there a way to restrict deleting files and folders to one person in the organization?

[icrew]

Yes-- put the files in a Shared Drive, and set the people you don't want to be able to delete files to the "contributor" level of access. See https://support.google.com/a/users/answer/12380484?hl=en for more details.

(In many ways, the ways that Shared Drives work is far more modern and sensible than the way MyDrive works....)

Hope that helps,

Ian

[Ysmaan]

Thank you for your response but unfortunately, I don't have the option to share as a "contributor" I only can share as a"Viewer", "Commenter" and "Editor", is there a way to add the "contributor" option?

[icrew]

This option only exists for Shared Drives, not My Drive (see screenshot below). Are your files in a Shared Drive?

[Ysmaan]

The files are saved in the shared drive "Computers" highlighted below:

[icrew]

"Computers" isn't a Shared Drive, it's a backup of your computer. Shared Drives literally show up under "Shared Drives" as shown in my screenshot above. You need to have the files in a Shared Drive for "Contributor" to work. See https://support.google.com/a/users/answer/7212025 for more information about Shared Drives, and see https://support.google.com/a/answer/7337469 for the Workspace Editions that include Shared Drives (which is most of them, but not all...)

Hope that helps,

Ian

[Ysmaan]

It turns out I do not have a "Shared Drive" in my Google Drive so I followed the steps to create one but unfortunately, I was unable to because when I clicked on the "+" I did not have the option to add a "Shared Drive",  What should I do?

[icrew]

Which Google Workspace edition do you have? See https://support.google.com/a/answer/10975849?hl=en for how to check.

Is it included on the list of editions in italics at the top of https://support.google.com/a/answer/7337469 ?

[Ysmaan]

I have Google Workspace Business Starter 

[icrew]

Aha. Then the post last May at https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2023/05/pooled-storage-shared-drives-for-google-workspace-bu... is probably relevant here. You should be getting shared drives "soon," but Google has been maddeningly unspecific about what "soon" actually means. If you do a search for "Business Starter Pooled Storage" here on GCC, you'll see a whole bunch of threads about that slowness. Sigh.

[Ysmaan]

Thank you so much for all your effort and time with my case, hopefully, I will get access soon to the Shared Drive feature.

Best regard,

Youssef