Drive Clean Up – Duplicated files shared out

GAT+ audit tool can help admins identify files using all sorts of criteria using the ‘Filtering‘ feature available throughout every audit. In this example, we are looking to identify all of the video files that are duplicated and shared with external users and then manage their access and ownership.

The scenario is to find the duplicate files, remove the external shares, and then delete the duplicated files. To achieve this we can break down the task into steps.

Step 1.  Identify duplicated video files that are shared externally #

Starting the Drive Clean Up: #

1. First, navigate to the Drive audit (1)
2. and then to the Files tab (2).
3. Next to run the filter to find files select the filter icon (3).
4. Now the filter needs to be defined, select the Type to be Duplicated Files. (4)
5.  select the minimum number of duplicates you are looking for, so ideally this is 2 and cannot be anything under, because at least 2 files are duplicates.(5)
6. Now we can add more criteria to the definition of the filter to target the files we want, Select the field to be ‘Type’ (6)
7. Select the type to be video (7)
8. Add a rule to the rule definition block (8)
9. Now we want to find these files that are externally shared, select the field to be ‘Sharing flags’ (9)
10. Select the sharing flags to be ‘Shared out’ (10)
11. Apply the filter (11)

As a result, all the video files that are duplicates and shared externally will be displayed.

Step 2. Remove the permissions of all external shares on the files and transfer ownership to delete the duplicate files. #

1. Select all files and select the file operations icon

2. Select ‘File management‘ this operation will allow us to Change ownership of the files and remove permissions in the same File management Job. Since GAT+ does not have a ‘delete’ files feature by design, we need to change ownership of the files to an account that we have access to so that they can be deleted from Drive.google.com.

3. Select the new owner who will be receiving the transfer of ownership to delete the files from their account. Here several options are presented to help with transferring ownership scenarios, fill in the new owner (1) and the path where the files will be placed (2)

4. Next, proceed to the ‘remove permissions‘ tab and choose the option to Remove all external permissions.

5. Next, go to the summary tab and select ‘send request’

This will be pending a security officer’s approval; consequently, the job will commence execution.

When the job is finished, it’s possible to check the status of every file where action was taken by checking the job in the File Management Log tab in the Drive audit.

Step 3. Drive Clean Up- Delete duplicate files #

Finally, navigate to the location where the files were placed in the new owner’s drive, then select and delete the file duplicates as needed.

Related Posts #

How to find any duplicate files in Google Drive

Transfer Files ownership of a suspended user

Copy Files or Folders from Internal or External Users