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How to move files to a shared drive (and why Drive sometimes won't let you).

Dragging a file into a shared drive changes who owns it and who can open it — and Drive refuses some moves outright: a folder with too many items it cannot take, a file owned by someone outside your organization, a drive where your role is too low. This page walks the mechanics, the refusals and the limits exactly as Google documents them, with links to the source pages. It does not make the copy-or-move decision for you — the shared drive move vs copy guide owns that question.

Written by the Geeplo team. Reviewed by Miguel Perez, co-founder. Last updated November 1, 2026.

A shared drive is not a shared folder

One paragraph, because the move only makes sense once the difference is clear. A shared folder lives inside someone's My Drive and stays that person's property; the access is a grant from the owner, and it goes when the owner says so. A shared drive is a drive of its own that the team owns: Google's help states that any files you add are owned by the team, and that they remain if you leave the drive. Every member holds a role — Viewer, Commenter, Contributor, Content manager or Manager — and that role decides what you can move, in which direction, and what refuses.

How a move to a shared drive works

The mechanics are drag-and-drop, but the rules around the drag are Google's, and they are worth knowing before the move (Add files & folders to a shared drive, Move files & folders into shared drives):

• My Drive to a shared drive: drag the file or folder over. Moving files takes Contributor, Content manager or Manager access to the drive; a folder only moves if you are a Manager of it. By default you can only move files and folders you own — an admin setting can let file editors move files they edit instead.
• Ownership passes to the drive. When a file you created moves in, the shared drive becomes its owner and you stay listed as the creator in the item details. If the original owner is in your organization but not a member of the drive, Google documents that they lose ownership but keep access to the file.
• Between shared drives: files move with Manager access on the source drive and Contributor, Content manager or Manager on the destination; folders move only with Manager access on both drives.
• Out to My Drive: the move takes Manager access on the shared drive and Editor access to the destination folder in My Drive. If the drive disallows viewers and commenters from downloading, printing or copying, that setting stays on the files when they move out.
• What changes on arrival: people who are not members of the drive lose access — only members and direct shares can open what moved in — and permissions a child folder inherited from its old parent folder are not copied along.

Why Drive refuses the move

A refused move is not a mystery to solve from scratch: Google documents the causes in its shared drive troubleshooting page, and when items cannot move, Drive offers a CSV download that names the error code per item. The causes Google documents:

• Your access level is too low. Files need Contributor, Content manager or Manager on the destination; a folder from My Drive needs Manager; moves between drives need Manager on the source for files and on both drives for folders. The error code is INSUFFICIENT_PERMISSION.
• The owner blocks it. Files owned by people in another organization cannot move in, even when that person is a member of the destination drive, and an externally owned folder blocks the internally owned subfolders inside it. Google's codes name the variants: DIFFERENT_CUSTOMER, OWNER_MUST_BE_MEMBER_OF_DESTINATION_SHARED_DRIVE, EDITOR_MOVE_IN_DISABLED (your domain does not allow editors to move files in), CANNOT_MOVE_AS_ADMIN.
• The item type cannot live there. Google's BLOCKED_TYPE code covers file types that are not supported in shared drives; some virtual file types cannot be added either, and Google documents separately that a form created with Google Forms inside a shared drive cannot accept file uploads. What cannot move is not dropped: Drive creates a shortcut in its place and relocates the original to the owner's My Drive.
• The folder exceeds a move limit. Google documents two folder-level caps: a folder will not move if it has 25 unmovable items or 10% unmovable items, whichever is smaller, and a single move can cover no more than 100,000 items. The fix Google suggests is smaller batches, or moving files individually.
• The tool or the timing is wrong. Folder moves are not supported in Drive for desktop — do them at drive.google.com — and a shared drive created minutes ago may refuse moves for a few minutes while its security policies process.
• The drive is out of room. The errors “Item can't be uploaded” and “Item can't be copied” mean the drive has no space left under its limits; a Manager or Content manager moves or deletes content, and a Contributor asks one to.

Shared drive limits, as Google publishes them

Google publishes the numbers on its shared drive limits page in the Workspace Learning Center, and they change — check that page for current values before you plan around them. The limits that decide what a move can take, as published when this page was written:

• 500,000 items per shared drive. Files, folders, shortcuts and items in trash all count toward the cap. A warning banner appears when less than 20% of the headroom is left, and admins can watch the Item cap column under “Manage shared drives” in the Admin console.
• Storage is whatever the admin capped. An administrator can set a storage limit on shared drives; the Details tab in Drive shows the limit, if there is one, and how much is used.
• 750 GB in per user per day. Uploads and copies count against 750 GB within 24 hours, and the allowance refreshes within 24 hours. Single files can be up to 5 TB; files over 750 GB cannot be copied at all.
• 600 members, 50,000 people. A drive takes 600 members, of which at most 100 can be groups, and 50,000 individuals counting people who reach the drive through groups. One group can itself be a member of up to 30,000 shared drives.
• 100 levels deep, 1,000 drives in the nav. Folders can nest up to 100 levels inside a shared drive, and the Drive left navigation lists up to 1,000 shared drives — beyond that you reach them by direct URL or search.

Moved, but not showing up?

The move reported success and the file is missing — four documented explanations, in the order we would check them:

• You are looking in My Drive. A file that moved into a shared drive left your My Drive tree; it now lives under Shared drives in the left navigation, and only there (plus search).
• The nav list is capped. Drive lists up to 1,000 shared drives in the left navigation; drives beyond that are reachable by direct URL or search, but they do not appear in the list.
• The drive is hidden for a big group. Google documents that a drive shared with a group of more than 1,000 people — or reaching more than 2,500 people through several groups — is hidden by default for members beyond those marks.
• Access changed with the move. A colleague who could open the folder in your My Drive and reports it gone after your move is describing the documented access change: non-members of the drive lose access, and only direct shares still reach them.

Where a drive register comes in

Every refusal above turns on facts you may have to chase across drives you are not a member of: who holds which role, who owns the drive, whether it takes outside sharing, how close it is to its caps. The Geeplo Shared Drive Management module puts every Shared Drive in one register — the owning team, the members, the sharing stance, the archive dates — and applies member changes in bulk, so the access a move needs is granted to a whole team in one pass instead of drive by drive.

Where this fits

This page is the mechanics of a move inside your own Workspace. When the question is whether to copy or to move — the decision, what each leaves behind, and which one a transition calls for — the shared drive move vs copy guide owns it. The Google Workspace offboarding guide covers where a membership change like this slots into the leaver runbook, and the Shared Drive Management module is the register behind the access checks above.