Lost a Google Drive file? You may have orphaned it (but it's okay, it can find its way back home)
I was updating a Google doc that I created a few years ago. I worked on it for over 5 hours and at its completion it was a glorious 42 pages long. Being a neat freak I didn't like the folder it was in so I decided to drag and drop it back into my main Drive. Then, it disappeared.
Within about 30 minutes of trying everything to find this file I was ready to issue an amber alert on it.
I called Google and there's a reason why Google is Google ... they are amazing at support. The original guy couldn't help me, although he did try at least 5 things and waited patiently for me to write out and then type out a 55 letter ID combo on the file. But alas, his efforts were not enough and he had to move my ticket up.
This morning I got a call from Google at exactly the time they said would call and here's what the problem was:
Two years ago I created the document with a different email address in a different Drive and that's why it became orphaned (it's been found and is home sipping hot chocolate now so don't worry). So if you're like me and you have multiple email addresses and multiple Google drives DO NOT attempt to move the file to a folder the "parent" Drive has no access to ... the file will literally disappear for EVERYONE. Below is the Google explanation in case you find yourself in the same sad situation. BTW #Google #Love #HighFive #Orphanfilescanbefound
Just to recap, the file disappeared because it was owned by your other G Suite account, [email protected]. Every time you move a file or folder shared with you to a location where the owner doesn't have access to, the file disappears for everyone, including the owner.
This is what we call orphaned files, as they have no parent folder. The way to restore them is to search fro them by name, add them back to the My Drive of the owners, and from there, share them back with whoever needs to have access. If you'd like to transfer ownership to a user in another G Suite account, you'll have to make a copy of it or re-upload it there.
For more information on the topics we discussed today, including examples and best practices, please check our documentation below:
Moving content from shared folders https://support.google.com/a/answer/2789107
Find an orphaned file https://support.google.com/a/answer/6008339
Transfer Drive files to a new owner https://support.google.com/a/answer/1247799