A shared drive, and a site
Google puts it plainly: shared drive files belong to the team instead of an individual, and when a member leaves, the files stay (Google). Every member holds one of five access levels: Manager, Content manager, Contributor, Commenter or Viewer (Google).
Microsoft describes a team site the same way: the place for files with shared ownership, where several people own the files and work on them together (Microsoft Learn). A site holds document libraries. A library inherits its permissions from the site, and a file inherits them from its library (Microsoft Learn). A team site comes with three permission groups: Owners with Full Control, Members with Edit, and Visitors with Read (Microsoft Learn).
By default, each team site is part of a Microsoft 365 group, which also brings a mailbox, a shared calendar and other collaboration tools. The group's owners become the site's owners, and its members become the site's members (Microsoft Learn).
- A shared drive
- Microsoft 365A SharePoint team site
- Good to knowFiles with shared ownership in both. The files belong to the team, not to the person who added them. Google, Microsoft Learn
- The member list, with five access levels
- Microsoft 365Three permission groups: Owners, Members and Visitors
- Good to knowOwners have Full Control, Members have Edit, and Visitors have Read. Google, Microsoft Learn
- The folder tree
- Microsoft 365Folders in a document library on the site
- Good to knowA library inherits the site's permissions, and a file inherits its library's. Microsoft Learn
- A team that also chats
- Microsoft 365A team in Teams, with its own site
- Good to knowEach standard channel's Files tab is a folder in the site's default library. Microsoft Learn
One site per drive, or fewer
The first decision is how many sites to make. Microsoft's guidance is that each unit of work should get a separate site collection, its term for a site and everything inside it (Microsoft Learn). It also says personnel and financial documents stay private to a small team by living on a separate team site (Microsoft Learn). One site can hold 2,000 lists and libraries, so Microsoft asks whether every topic needs a site, or whether a document library would do (Microsoft Learn).
The member list decides whether drives can share a site. Two drives with the same members can become two libraries, or two folders, on one site. Two drives with different members become two sites. Giving a library its own member list means breaking inheritance: the library starts with a copy of the site's permissions and no longer follows them, and Microsoft's advice is not to break it (Microsoft Learn). For example, a Finance drive and an HR drive with different members become a Finance site and an HR site. A Finance 2024 drive and a Finance 2025 drive with the same members become one Finance site with two libraries. Microsoft recommends organizing sites into hubs rather than nesting them as subsites (Microsoft Learn).
A team in Teams, or a site on its own
When a team is created from scratch in Microsoft Teams, a new SharePoint site is created and connected to it. All standard channels share that site, and each channel's Files tab is a folder in the site's default document library. A private channel gets its own site, which only its members can open. Team owners and members are placed in the site's Owners and Members groups (Microsoft Learn). So a drive whose team also talks in Teams fits the team's site, with the drive's folders as folders under a channel.
A drive that people read more than they edit, such as a policies and templates drive, is a different case. Microsoft describes a communication site as the place to share content for viewing but not editing, with permissions managed through the site's own groups rather than a Microsoft 365 group (Microsoft Learn). A Microsoft 365 group has no view-only membership, so anyone who should only read is added directly to the site's Visitors group (Microsoft Learn).
Storage and item counts
Size rarely decides this. An organization's SharePoint storage is 1 TB plus 10 GB per license, and one site can hold up to 25 TB (Microsoft Learn). A shared drive holds at most 500,000 items, counting files, folders, shortcuts and items in the trash (Google), and a document library can hold up to 30 million (Microsoft Learn). The limit that matters is the list view threshold: a database operation such as a query can process at most 5,000 items at a time, and the limit cannot be changed (Microsoft Support). It limits a single operation, not storage. A view or query that tries to process more than 5,000 items at once reaches the threshold, so a large flat folder, such as years of scanned invoices, is worth checking against it before the move.
A decision per drive
For each shared drive, the plan records:
- Who is a member, and at which access level.
- Whether another drive has the same audience, and so can share a site.
- Whether the team works in Microsoft Teams, which decides whether the drive belongs in that team's site.
- Who the site's owner is in Microsoft 365.
- Which sharing restrictions the drive carries, and which files reached outside the organization.
- The longest folder path, any file over 250 GB, and any Google Sites, Maps or shortcuts inside.
Roles and permissions
A team site has three permission groups, so placing five Google access levels in them is a design choice, and two of the five change meaning on the way. The table pairs each Google level with the nearest SharePoint group by what its permission level allows. Microsoft's own migration tool maps by permission instead, to Can edit or Can view, as the tool section below describes.
- Manager
- What it allows in GoogleAdds and removes members, changes access levels, permanently deletes files from the trash, and can delete the drive.
- Nearest SharePoint groupOwners. Full Control, for people who manage the site's permissions and settings. Google, Microsoft Learn
- Content manager
- What it allows in GoogleUploads, edits, moves and trashes files, and shares files and, unless the drive's settings prevent it, folders. New members get this level by default.
- Nearest SharePoint groupMembers. Edit covers viewing, adding, updating and deleting items. Google, Microsoft Learn
- Contributor
- What it allows in GoogleEdits and adds files, and shares individual files. Cannot delete files. In Drive for desktop and the ChromeOS Files app, this level gives only read access.
- Nearest SharePoint groupMembers, the nearest level. Edit and Contribute both include deleting items. Google, Microsoft Learn
- Commenter
- What it allows in GoogleViews and comments on files. Cannot edit or delete.
- Nearest SharePoint groupVisitors. Read covers viewing pages and items and downloading documents. Google, Microsoft Learn
- Viewer
- What it allows in GoogleViews files. Cannot comment.
- Nearest SharePoint groupVisitors. Read. Google, Microsoft Learn
The two changes are at the edges. Google says Contributors, Commenters and Viewers cannot delete files (Google). If a Contributor lands in Members, that person can now delete, because the Edit level includes deleting items (Microsoft Learn). If a Commenter lands in Visitors, the Read level covers viewing and downloading (Microsoft Learn), and the comment-only distinction is gone. A Contributor who worked read-only from Drive for desktop gains editing as well. A Contributor who should not delete or edit, or a Commenter who must still comment, is worth a note in the plan.
The people who can manage membership change too. In Google, only a Manager adds or removes members (Google). In SharePoint, site owners and members can both add new users by default (Microsoft Learn), and Microsoft recommends managing a team site's permissions through its Microsoft 365 group rather than through the site's groups (Microsoft Learn).
Members added through a Google group
A shared drive can have a Google group as a member. When someone is added to the group, they get membership of the drives the group belongs to (Google). A drive can have up to 600 members, of which up to 100 can be groups (Google). A group used this way, such as an all-staff group on the company-wide drive, is worth noting, because the people it brings in are not on the drive's own list.
Sharing beyond the members
Membership is not the only way into a shared drive. Members with Manager, Content manager or Contributor access can share individual files with people who are not members, unless the drive's sharing settings prohibit it (Google). A Manager can set four restrictions on a drive: prevent sharing files with people outside the organization, prevent sharing files with non-members, prevent specific members from accessing folders, and prevent Content managers from sharing folders. The restrictions override file and folder sharing (Google). An administrator's default settings apply only to new shared drives, so existing drives carry whatever their Managers chose (Google).
SharePoint has the same two layers. Sharing a file or folder with someone who does not have access to the site breaks inheritance on that item (Microsoft Learn). A library supports 50,000 such unique permissions, with 5,000 recommended, and inheritance cannot be broken on a library or folder that holds more than 100,000 items (Microsoft Learn). Microsoft's advice is to keep sensitive material in one place, so inheritance is broken once (Microsoft Learn).
External sharing is on by default for the whole SharePoint and OneDrive environment, and it is set at the organization level and again per site. When the two differ, the most restrictive value applies (Microsoft Learn). The organization's levels are Anyone, New and existing guests, Existing guests, and Only people in your organization, and each site's own setting must be the same or more restrictive (Microsoft Learn). So a drive that was restricted to people inside the organization maps to a site whose external sharing is set to Only people in your organization. Microsoft's own advice for confidential information is a site with external sharing turned off (Microsoft Learn).
When someone shares a file from a site, the sharing dialog offers four kinds of link: Anyone, People in your organization with the link, People with existing access, and People you choose (Microsoft Support). The Anyone link is available only where the organization's external sharing is set to Anyone, and when external sharing is restricted or turned off, guests typically lose access within an hour (Microsoft Learn).
Names, sizes and limits
Names and paths
SharePoint refuses some names Google Drive accepts. The characters " * : < > ? / \ | are not allowed in a file or folder name, nor are leading or trailing spaces, names such as .lock, CON, PRN, AUX, NUL, COM0 to COM9 and LPT0 to LPT9, _vti_ anywhere in a name, or a name starting with ~$ (Microsoft Support). A folder named Q3 reports: draft or a file named Budget 2025 / final.xlsx needs a new name.
The entire path, including the file name, cannot exceed 400 characters, counted after any web-address encoding is undone (Microsoft Support). A shared drive allows folders nested 100 levels deep (Google), so a deep tree of long folder names can run past 400. Desktop Office on Windows cannot open a file whose full path exceeds 260 characters, even when the file is stored locally (Microsoft Support), which is the lower number to plan around for anyone who syncs the library.
Sizes and counts
A single file uploaded to SharePoint can be up to 250 GB (Microsoft Learn). Google accepts uploads up to 5 TB (Google), so a file above 250 GB, such as a raw video archive, has no home in a library. For syncing, Microsoft recommends no more than 300,000 files in a single library (Microsoft Learn).
Versions
Version history is on by default in SharePoint (Microsoft Learn). The organization default is manual limits with 500 major versions and no expiration (Microsoft Learn), and Microsoft marks the Automatic setting as recommended (Microsoft Learn). With either setting, version history starts new at the destination. Whether a file's earlier Google versions move depends on the migration tool.
What Microsoft's tool does
Microsoft's Migration Manager moves Google Drive content into Microsoft 365. For each drive, the administrator selects a OneDrive, SharePoint or Teams path as the destination, in the form of a site, a library and an optional folder, and once content starts moving the destination cannot be changed (Microsoft Learn). A migration task should not exceed 100,000 items or 1 TB (Microsoft Learn), against a shared drive's ceiling of 500,000 items (Google).
Members and permissions
For a shared drive's members, Microsoft's steps are to re-create a Microsoft 365 group with the same membership as the drive's Google group. If the destination team site already has a linked group, that group is edited instead. The Google group is then mapped to the Microsoft 365 group (Microsoft Learn). The tool maps Manager, Content manager and Contributor to Can edit, and Commenter and Viewer to Can view (Microsoft Learn).
By default, Migration Manager migrates folder permissions. File permissions are not migrated, and each file inherits its destination folder's permissions, unless file permission migration is turned on in the project settings (Microsoft Learn). If the destination is the root of a document library, the permissions on the source's root folder are not migrated; Microsoft's workaround is to create a folder in the library and use that as the destination (Microsoft Learn). Migration Manager does not re-create external sharing links and does not share content with external collaborators (Microsoft Learn).
Permissions depend on identity mapping, the step that matches Google users and groups to Microsoft 365 users and groups. The tool looks for exact name matches, and Microsoft says that in most cases this automatic matching is unlikely to find every identity. The rest are mapped from a CSV file, which the tool does not validate (Microsoft Learn). Microsoft's own caution is to verify the resulting access rather than assuming that identity mapping alone preserves every source permission (Microsoft Learn).
Files, versions and re-runs
Google Docs, Sheets and Slides are converted to Word, Excel and PowerPoint files through Google's export. Google Drawings become PNG images by default, shortcut files are skipped, and files Google lists as unorganized are neither scanned nor reported (Microsoft Learn). Google does not allow Google Sites or Google Maps files to be exported from Drive, so they do not move (Microsoft Learn). On Google Forms, Microsoft's pages disagree: one says Forms are migrated by default (Microsoft Learn), and the reports page carries a failure code stating that Forms migration under Google shared drives is not supported (Microsoft Learn).
Only the most recent version of each file is copied by default. A setting migrates a fixed number of versions, or all of them, and Microsoft recommends no more than 10 (Microsoft Learn). Google files created before May 2, 2022 show a scanned size of 1 byte, so the scan understates how much a drive holds (Microsoft Learn).
Running a task again starts a delta sync, which transfers only new or updated files. A file is skipped when its destination path is unchanged and the destination copy is newer than the source (Microsoft Learn), so a destination file someone edited after the first pass is not overwritten, even if the source was also edited (Microsoft Learn). Files with the same name are renamed with suffixes (1), (2) and so on, and when two drives share a display name, only the first discovered one is migrated (Microsoft Learn). Reports expire after 90 days (Microsoft Learn). Before signing off, Microsoft's step is to verify representative file content, versions and access, and to reconcile the source inventory with the destination (Microsoft Learn).
How MigrationSanity moves shared drives
MigrationSanity runs the move for you. Each shared drive gets its own SharePoint team site unless you name an existing site for it, so a Finance drive becomes a Finance site. A new site has no Teams team and no mailbox attached. Its owner is the first Google Manager on the drive who has a confirmed Microsoft 365 account; if there is none, you name the owner in writing.
Sites and members, before any file moves
Before any file moves, your SharePoint administrator runs a setup script. It creates the new sites and adds their members by role. Managers become Owners, Content managers and Contributors become Members, and Commenters and Viewers become Visitors. The roles section above says what that changes for a Contributor and a Commenter.
To add members, the account the script runs as is made a site collection administrator of each new site for the minutes the script works on it, then that right is removed. Every grant and removal is written to the script's log. If Microsoft 365 stops answering before the removal is confirmed, the setup says so, the next run removes the right first, and no file migration starts until then.
If you name a site you already have, the script leaves that site and its access unchanged and lists the drive's members as not added. People outside your organization, and people missing from the migration's people list, are not added either. The setup summary lists everyone it did not add.
Files
- Files land in the same folder hierarchy they had in Google and keep their created and modified dates. Folders take the date they were created at the destination. If SharePoint refuses a file's dates, the copy carries its migration date for now, the report names it, and later runs try again.
- Google Docs, Sheets and Slides become Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, and Google Drawings become PDFs. A Google file too large to export is reported by name.
- Google item types with no SharePoint equivalent, shortcuts among them, are listed in the report by name, and no placeholder is created for them. Files in the trash and empty folders are not migrated.
- A name SharePoint does not allow is adjusted. Two files that end up with the same adjusted name stay distinct, and neither is overwritten.
- Only the current version of a file migrates. Open comments on Google Docs, Sheets and Slides arrive as Word, Excel and PowerPoint comments.
- A re-run never duplicates a file. A file that changed in Google after it was copied is copied again and replaces the SharePoint copy, including any edits made there, so migrated files stay untouched in SharePoint until the move is finished.
Sharing
Sharing on individual files and folders is not re-created. Instead, the report lists every file or folder whose sharing in Google reached beyond your organization: a link for anyone, an outside person, or another organization's domain. Each line names the item and who it reached, so re-sharing in SharePoint is a deliberate choice. Sharing with everyone inside your own organization by link is listed separately. A drive's sharing restrictions are listed in the setup summary and are not carried to SharePoint. The setup leaves your organization's SharePoint sharing defaults unchanged.
Where MigrationSanity goes further than Microsoft's own tools
- Sites and members
- Microsoft's own tools, by defaultYou re-create each drive's members as a Microsoft 365 group, map it to the Google group, and choose the site the drive lands in (Microsoft Learn)
- MigrationSanityA new SharePoint site per drive by default, with eligible members added by role through a setup script your SharePoint administrator runs
- Checking what arrived
- Microsoft's own tools, by defaultBefore sign-off, the administrator verifies representative file content, versions and access (Microsoft Learn)
- MigrationSanityEvery file's contents are checked with a hash on both sides as it is copied. Office files, which SharePoint rewrites on arrival, are accepted once the upload is confirmed and counted in the report
- Files shared outside the company
- Microsoft's own tools, by defaultExternal sharing links are not re-created (Microsoft Learn)
- MigrationSanitySharing outside the company is not re-created either. The report lists each file or folder and who it reached, so re-sharing is a deliberate choice
- Shortcuts
- Microsoft's own tools, by defaultShortcut files are skipped (Microsoft Learn)
- MigrationSanityShortcuts are listed in the report by name
The Microsoft column describes Migration Manager's documented default. The MigrationSanity column describes the service on How it works and the migration behavior in the Known Limitations documents each client receives. Known Google limitations summarizes those documents.
Vendor pages checked October 2026. Microsoft and Google change their tools often, and the linked pages are the reference.