Google Drive: Find Out at a Glance Who Can Access Your Files

If you have been using the sharing feature of Google Docs (now Google Drive) for some time, you may have quite a few files in the Drive that are accessible to other users. Would you like to review this list?

Google Drive lets you share files with specific contacts or you can make them public and anyone can then view your files. Sharing also prevents you from clogging someone else’s mailbox. For instance, if you are sending a large file as an email attachment, a better option would be that you upload the file to Google Drive and share the link instead.

Here’s a simple Google script that will scan your Google Drive and prepare a list all files that have been shared from your Google Drive. To get started, click here to copy the Google Script in your own Google Drive. Then choose Run->Start to execute the Google Script. The script will ask for authorization since it needs to check the sharing permissions of the file in your Google Drive. Say “authorize” and you’ll soon get an email with a list of all the shared files that were found in your Google Drive.

The report, see the above screenshot, will have links to the shared files and also a list of users who can view or edit that particular file. If a file can be viewed by anyone, the user will be mentioned as Public. The Google Script checks the sharing permissions of every single file in your Google Drive and thus it may take a minute or two to finish if you have too many files in the Drive.

Bonus tip: Did you know that you can set an auto-expiry date for your shared links in Google Drive. The shared link will automatically stop working after a certain date or time set by you.

VIA