Google shared drive permissions don't stick

[Jeffrey Burke]

Reaching out to see if anyone knows how these actually work. We have a legacy shared folder from service account shared to staff. It works great for six weeks at a time then people lose access, we reshare and make sure the target audience allows for staff to access but then it breaks again. Shared to users individually and a teachers group.  How do you make permissions actually stick?

We are working on migration to a shared drive which will hopefully have some grasp on permissions but refactoring years' worth of files to a sensible location takes time.

Any advice or help welcome as this is an ongoing nightmare. Why can't permissions just stick.

Jeffrey.

[Sue Way]

I have recently managed to persuade some of Departments to move to a Google Shared Drive.  It has been a bit of a push for some departments that have been using shared folders in Google Drive since they moved into the Google space 2012. I have a couple of Departments to go who are getting a push again once our seniors leave.

The ones that have moved have said they wished they had done it sooner.

Even the long serving staff have managed the switch.

Good luck.

Sue Way | IT Services Director (she, her)

Te Kura Manawaroa o Pipitea | Wellington Girls' College

Pipitea Street, Thorndon, Wellington 6011  

[Marlon Yu]

Never had a problem with permissions being lost without someone (or something, like a script) doing it.

 

Try going to the admin console > Reporting > Audit and Investigation > Drive Log Events and filter for “Folder” and additionally, maybe “Event = User Sharing Permissions Change” or “Event = Owner Changed” and check who Description or Actor column to see who/what changed it.

 

Marlon

 

From: techies-f...@googlegroups.com <techies-f...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Jeffrey Burke
Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2025 1:44 PM
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Subject: [techies-for-schools] Google shared drive permissions don't stick

 

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[Dale Monk]

Hi Jeffrey,

This is a common challenge with older Drive structures, but there are reliable ways to prevent it.

To answer your specific question, when ownership and sharing depend on legacy service and personal accounts, any change to the relevant user (group memberships or permission inheritance) can cause users to lose access to files. Even when access is managed through Google Groups, membership updates or sync delays can have the same effect. We recommend schools use Shared Drives for all school-owned content (including lesson plans, etc), with only temporary or personal material remaining in individual Drives.

Once content is in a Shared Drive, ownership belongs to the organisation. That means:

• Permissions are inherited consistently from the top level.
• Files remain accessible even when staff leave or change roles.
• Storage is pooled at the organisational level rather than assigned per user (this is now moot under the current 1 TB per-user limit in Google Workspace for Education, but it still makes a difference to how Google stores your data).

To successfully migrate to Shared Drives, the account performing the move must own all files. Otherwise, Drive will only move files owned by that account and create shortcuts for the rest. There are several ways to handle this, such as using GAM with a list of file IDs, but a managed migration tool or API-based approach is the most reliable method. It ensures ownership is transferred first and fully applied before the move occurs. We use a purpose-built utility that performs the ownership changes, waits until they are persisted and then performs the move; all using Google's APIs.

Until your migration is complete, I recommend:

• Setting permissions only at the top folder level and avoiding per-file sharing.
• Using a single, stable service account as the folder owner.
• Ensuring all shared groups are domain-managed and not external.

Once your content is in properly structured Shared Drives, your recurring permission issues should stop for good, giving your staff and students a far more stable and predictable environment. You can then also invite external users to participate in tailored Shared Drives, or even to specific files, without risking ownership issues or disputes.

Best regards,

Dale