Google to Microsoft (MS) Environments
Current Google productivity and collaboration tools will migrate to Microsoft environments—they are:
System / Account | Microsoft | |
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User Drives | ![]() | ![]() |
Shared Drives | ![]() | ![]() |
Meetings | ![]() | ![]() |
Groups | ![]() | ![]() |
Chat | ![]() | ![]() |
Browser | ![]() | ![]() |
About Migrating Your Shared Drives
The planning and initial preparation have already begun and many of you have started migrating your Shared Drive folders and preparing your data. There are several actions that need to be completed for Shared Drives prior to the MS migration:
1. Clean up, delete, and organize your files. Remove any unwanted or unused files. Please ensure the organization of your remaining folders and files is logical and intuitive within your department / group. If there isn’t a logical place for something, please work with the MS Migration team to determine what to do with the data. The organizational structure should be provided to the MS Migration team.
2. Since we are moving from a Google environment to a MS environment, any critical files (e.g., graphic-heavy briefs, complex spreadsheets, etc.) should be saved from a docs / sheets / slides format to a Word / Excel / PowerPoint format. If a file is already in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, it will migrate over cleanly.
3. Next, move shared folders from Google My Drive to Google Shared Drive. This will ensure that during the migration, any shared folders will be migrated to SharePoint and not an individual My Drive account.
Please note, when you move to Shared Drive, you CANNOT restrict folder permissions. If you have sensitive documents that are shared with others, consider password protecting them until they are migrated to the Microsoft platform.
Finally, a Google Shared Drive can only house 400,000 files. You may need to break up a folder into several different folders for the move from My Drive to a Shared Drive. You will be able to re-consolidate the folders in MS SharePoint once the migration is complete. MS SharePoint allows up to 30 Million files in a folder.
About Migrating Your Gmail
Prior to the migration you will receive a new password for your MS Outlook email account. All emails will automatically be transferred from Gmail to Outlook. As part of the conversion from Google Gmail to MS Outlook, please note that email attachments in a Google format (i.e., Docs, Sheets, Slides) will not migrate over to the new environment. Additionally, any Google links will not work after the migration.
Migration Schedule
September 13-19, 2023
Shared Drive Owners Impact Briefing / Initial Training
September 18, 2023 – October 11, 2023
Group / Department Meetings
October 16, 2023
Email sent to all employees
November 20, 2023
Data Migration from My Drives to Shared Drives complete
December 28, 2023
Mapped Shared Drives migrated to SharePoint
January 2, 2024
Email sent to employees with new Outlook Passwords