Unsharing Google Drive Files Upon Employee Separation

Overview

In most cases when a UAH employee is offboarded, access to their UAH Google account is revoked. However, there are special cases where an employee is allowed to retain access to their Google account. For example, former employees who are current or recent students retain access to their Google account for the same amount of time as all other UAH students. Learn more about what happens to email accounts when employees separate from UAH.

When working with employees who may have continued access to their Google accounts, faculty and staff should be mindful of which Google Drive files are shared with them. Internal documents may need to be manually "unshared" upon separation in order to ensure the security of private information.

Note that only file Owners and Editors have the ability to edit share permissions.

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• Unshare directly in the Google Docs, Sheets, Slides editors
• Unshare individual files in Drive
• Unshare entire folders in Drive

Unshare directly in the Google Docs, Sheets, Slides editors

For Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and other Google files, access can be managed directly in the editor.

1. In the editor, select Share
   
2. Select the drop-down next to the name of the user for whom you want to remove access
   
3. To revoke total access to the document, select Remove access
   
4. The user will be removed from the list of People with access. Select Save
   
5. A confirmation message will appear at the top-center of the screen stating Access updated
   

Unshare individual files in Drive

For any individual Google Drive file, access can be managed at drive.google.com.

1. Navigate to drive.google.com and right-click on the file
   
2. Select Share
   
3. Select the drop-down next to the name of the user for whom you want to remove access
   
4. To revoke total access to the document, select Remove access
   
5. The user will be removed from the list of People with access. Select Save
   
6. A confirmation message will appear at the top-center of the screen stating Access updated
   

Unshare entire folders in Drive

For entire Google Drive folders, access can be managed at drive.google.com.

1. Navigate to drive.google.com and navigate to the folder
2. Select the drop-down next to the folder title at the top of the screen
   
3. Select Share
   
4. Select the drop-down next to the name of the user for whom you want to remove access
   
5. To revoke total access to the document, select Remove access
   
6. The user will be removed from the list of People with access. Select Save
   
7. A confirmation message will appear at the bottom-left corner of the screen stating Access updated
   

Still Need Help?

If you have additional questions about this topic, please contact the OIT Help Desk.