Google for

Education
Storage Guide
July 2024
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Table of contents

Understanding The New Storage Policy 3

Calculate storage limits 3

More storage for larger domains 4

Storage management 5
User reports – determine current usage by users 6

User reports – analyze storage by OU 6

Set storage limits for users by OU / group 7

Maintain an exception group to work with users over quota limits 9

Managing shared drives – determine the scope of storage within shared drives 10

Set storage limits on shared drives 11

Analysis of storage utilization - additional options 13

User storage 13

Highlights reports – overall domain usage & growth over time 13

Account reports – determine current usage by users 14

Shared drive storage 15

Highlights reports – overall shared drive usage within domain 15

Sharing settings – audit shared drive creation & migration settings 16

Remediation - admin-driven 18

User storage 18
 Shared drive storage 18

Storage tools – sort & delete shared drives 18

Remediation – user-driven 20
User experience – near or at quota limits 20

Moving data to personal Drive/Google One 21

Find large files to delete 24

Sample communication templates 26

To notify high-storage users 26

To notify users of the storage limits being enforced 27

Resource list 29
Understanding the new storage policy
A new storage policy comes into effect across all Google Workspace for Education editions for
existing customers in July 2022. The amount of pooled storage available after this date depends on
your edition and your Workspace active usage. Use the information in this section to assist you in
calculating available storage for your domain. Storage across all editions includes usage in Drive,
Photos, Gmail and Shared Drives. Note:

● Starting May 2, 2022, new and updated Google Docs, Sheets, Sides, Forms, Drawings, and
Jamboard files count toward your organization’s storage quota.

● Storage used by suspended users counts toward your storage pool.

● Deleted messages (Gmail) and files (Drive) retained by Google Vault do not count against the
user’s storage quota or your institution’s total pooled storage.

Calculate storage limits

● Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals - 100 TB of pooled storage shared by your
organization.

● Google Workspace for Education Standard - 100 TB of pooled storage shared by your
organization.

● Google Workspace for Education Plus - 100 TB of pooled storage shared by your
organization, plus 20 GB added to the shared pool per license. Customers continuing on legacy
G Suite Enterprise for Education licenses will also have 100 GB added to their shared pool per
paid employee license.

● Google Workspace for Education Teaching and Learning Upgrade - 100 TB of pooled
storage shared by your organization, plus 100 GB added to the shared pool per staff license.

Examples:

● With 10,000 Workspace for Education Plus licenses purchased (student & staff), the pool of
storage is 300 TB:
100 TB (base storage) + (10,000 licenses x 20 GB = 200 TB) = 300 TB available storage

● With 100 Teaching and Learning Upgrade licenses purchased, the pool of storage is 110 TB:
100 TB (base storage) + (100 licenses x 100 GB = 10 TB) = 110 TB available storage
More storage for larger domains
Institutions with greater than 20,000 active users receive additional baseline storage of 5 GB per
user for each active user over 20,000.

Active users are counted as the peak number of 30-day unique logins over the past 180 days. You
can estimate your active users by reviewing 30-day unique logins.

Your active user count and additional storage based on active users are automatically calculated and
updated twice per year. These additional storage grants are made on April 1 and October 1.
Storage management
As of April 2022, all storage related activities can be accessed and managed from
the Admin Console within the new Storage area.

Admins can view a variety of information and take actions related to storage management for
their organization. Improvements you’ll notice are:

● Enhanced features and added information for improved reporting capabilities

● Simplified user management, including setting storage limits for users and bulk management of
shared drives, and more

The new Storage area shows the total storage usage of the domain, broken down by Drive,
Gmail, and Photos and areas for:

● Storage settings - configure limits on users using groups or OUs

● Users using the most storage - view users with the highest storage usage and access a link
to a detailed, customizable report

● Shared drives using the most storage - view shared drives with the highest storage and
access a link to a detailed, customizable report with the ability to easily delete and suspend
shared drives from the action menu
User reports – determine current usage by users
This option is available for all Workspace for Education editions.

With the new storage tools, admins now have the ability to pull reports directly from the list of users
under Directory > Users in the Admin Console. Advantages to this include:

● The ability to sort by ‘Storage used’ to quickly view and focus on top users

● The ability to quickly view storage used in relation to storage limits assigned for individual users

● The ability to download direct reports including total storage usage, usage across Gmail, Drive,
and Photos, and options to quickly compare storage totals next to columns such as “Last Sign
In” and “Org Unit path”

To pull a report from the Users list:

1. In the Admin Console Home page, select Storage > View all users

2. From the left, select the desired OU to filter results for export

3. Use the Filter menu at the top of the user list to further filter results. Filter examples:

a. User status: active or suspended users

b. Storage status: users out of storage, with less than 10% of storage remaining, or with less
than 20% of storage remaining

4. Select Download users at the the top of the users list

5. Under Select columns, select All users info columns and currently select columns. Note -
downloading all columns will include the ‘Org Unit path’ column

6. Under Select format, select Google Sheets

Once the download is complete, navigate to the Google Sheet to begin to analyze the data.
Reference the section ‘User Reports - Analyze storage by OU’ in this guide for more information on
how to analyze the data to make decisions about how to apply storage limits across OUs.

User reports – analyze storage by OU

This option is available for all Workspace for Education editions.

Downloaded Users’ Reports offer admins a way to analyze average storage used by each OU,
information which can be useful when deciding policies regarding storage limits. See the section
‘User Reports - Determine current usage by users’ in this guide for more information on how to pull
these reports.

Analyze storage by OU:

1. Follow the steps outlined in the section ‘User Reports - Determine current usage by users’ in
this guide
 2. Navigate to the downloaded Google Sheet from the Tasks icon in the upper right corner of the
Admin Console

3. In the Google Sheet, add a column after ‘Storage Used [READ ONLY]’

4. Label this column as ‘Storage Used’

5. In the top cell of this column, enter the formula below. This formula will provide storage in MB.
Note ‘AH2’ referenced in this formula is the first cell under the ‘Storage Used [Read ONLY]’
column:
=SPLIT(AH2,CONCATENATE(SPLIT(AH2,".0123456789"))) * IF(REGEXMATCH(AH2, "GB"), 1000,
IF(REGEXMATCH(AH2, "TB"),(1000*1000),1))

6. Copy the formula in each cell of the column or click option to autofill

7. Select all the cells in the sheet

8. Select Insert menu, then select Pivot table

9. From dialog box, select New sheet

10. On the right sidebar of the newly created sheet titled Pivot table editor, click Add button next
to Rows and select ‘Org Unit Path [Required]’

11. Click Add next to Values and select ‘Storage Used’. In the Summarized by menu select
‘Average’. This will give the average Storage used by each OU in the organization.

Set storage limits for users by OU / group

This option is available for all Workspace for Education editions.

After you have analyzed the average storage totals, go to Storage in the Admin Console to manage
storage across the domain. When setting policies at the OU level and considering inheritance /
override settings, it is important to note the following:

● Set a baseline limit at the root OU, followed by override limits at each sub-OU as needed. This
will help account for any account moves between OUs, ensuring a limit is always set for every
user in the domain.

● In the case where users in sub-OUs with higher storage than those at parent/root OU levels, set
the override policies on the sub-OUs first.

● Use Exception Groups to work with users who are near, at, or over storage limits you want to
set. See the section ‘Maintain an Exception Group to work with users over storage limits’ in this
guide for more information.

● When setting policies at the Group level for multiple groups, the limit on the group with the
higher priority will take precedence. See this Help Center documentation for more information
on working with configuration groups. Note: best practice is to set the storage limits on the
group with the highest limit first, then the group with the next highest limit, etc. until limits are
set on all groups.
To set individual storage limits on all users in an OU:

1. In the Storage tool, click Manage under the Storage settings card

2. On left, filter by the desired OU. Note default policies are set to Off

3. Under Storage use and Settings / User storage limit, select On

4. Under Storage limit*, enter a number for the storage limit

5. Under the Unit menu, select MB, GB, or TB

6. Select OVERRIDE

7. Repeat this process for all desired OUs

To set storage limits on individual groups:

1. In the Storage tool, click Manage under the Storage settings card

2. On the left, select Groups

3. Type the group name and / or select the group you want to apply the storage policy to

4. Under Storage use and Settings / User storage limit, select On

5. Under Storage limit*, enter a number for the storage limit

6. Under the Unit menu, select MB, GB, or TB

7. Select SAVE

8. Repeat this process for all desired groups

To view an individual user limit:

1. In the Storage tool, click Manage under the Storage settings card

2. On the left, select Users

3. Begin typing in the email address / account to focus on. Select the desired user

4. Under Storage use and settings, you can view the following information for the individual user:

a. Used storage vs. total storage limit, including a graphic representation of how much is
stored in each service (Google Drive, Google Photos, and Gmail)

b. The number of documents a user owns

c. The name of the group or OU that the storage limit is inherited from

d. The storage limit for a user and the state of the policy (‘ON’ or ‘OFF’)

Note: Once you set limits on user accounts, users will see an informational banner in their Drive user
interface that indicates a storage limit has been set. See below screenshot for details:

Maintain an exception group to work with users over quota limits

This option is available for all Workspace for Education editions.

Users may need flexibility in the assigned storage limit, and groups give admins more options
when working within such scenarios. Admins can temporarily add the user as a member of a group
with a higher storage limit than the OU or group the user is already a member of, and the user
will inherit the higher storage limit. Note: Limits set for groups will always override any limits
set on the OU.

To temporarily add a user to a group with a higher storage limit:

1. Follow the instructions for setting up a group. Best practices to consider:

 a. Create a Custom group limiting Access Settings and Membership settings to Group Owners

b. Select Only invited users under Who can join the group

c. Do not allow members outside the organization

d. Note: Users will be able to remove themselves from the Group until you set the appropriate
permissions via the API only. For more details on available properties in the API, see this
documentation. Using the API Explorer and the Group: update method, admins should set
the ‘whoCanLeaveGroup’ property to ‘NONE_CAN_LEAVE’. Admins can also update this
setting using GAM. See this documentation for more details on commands to run using
GAM.

2. Name the group after the policy you will set making it easier to know at a glance what the group
is for. For instance Policy_Storage_25GB@[Link]. Use the description field to further
describe the purpose of the group for other admins

3. Assign users as members to the group created. Potential members can be isolated by using
User Reports. Sort by ‘Storage used’ column to locate top users, multi-select the users to focus
on, select More options, then select Add selected users to groups

4. When the user has reduced their storage to be under the limit set for the OU they are in,
remove the user from the exception group created

Best practice dictates setting group storage policy limits higher than OU limits. This way if users are
removed from a group, the user will be subject to the lower OU limit.

Managing shared drives – determine the scope of storage within

shared drives
This option is available for all Workspace for Education editions.

From the Admin Console Home page:

1. Select Storage > View all shared drives to view a list of all shared drives for the domain

a. Note this will pre-sort the list of shared drives by size, ascending to descending order

b. For an unsorted list, admins can select Apps > Google Workspace > Drive and Docs >
Manage shared drives

2. The following filters are available under Add a filter:

● Select no members to view shared drives without members

● Select Date created and enter a range of dates to view shared drives created before a
certain date
 ● Now available with the new Storage Tools, select the down arrow next to the 'Storage used'
column to sort the shared drives according to storage used:

For additional features available with the new Storage Tools, refer to the section ‘Storage Tools -
Sort & Delete Shared Drives’ in this guide for details on the ability to delete an entire shared drive,
including its contents.

Set storage limits on shared drives

This option is available for all Workspace for Education editions.

To prevent shared drives from using too much of your organization’s storage, you can set a storage
limit for the shared drives assigned to a specific organizational unit. For example, you might want
each shared drive in a “Students” organizational unit to have a 10GB limit while each shared drive for
the rest of the organization has a 100GB limit. To set these limits, set the 10GB limit on shared drives
in your top-level organizational unit, then set the 10GB limit on shared drives in the “Students”
organizational unit.

Note the following when working with storage limits on shared drives:
● If you want to apply different storage limits to different shared drives, learn how to assign
shared drives to organizational units.
● Without shared drive limit policies set at the top-level or child organizational unit, all newly
created shared drives may receive a default limit of 100GB after January 23rd, 2023. To
override this default limit, admins should set a shared drive limit policy at the top-level
organizational unit, or override the top-level organizational unit policy by setting a separate
policy for child organizational units. For more information on setting separate policies by
organizational unit, refer to Change service settings for different users.
● If a shared drive exceeds its storage limit, users will not be able to add new files or edit existing
files stored within the shared drive. To restore service, content managers or managers of the
 shared drive can move files out of the shared drive or delete files as needed. Admins can also
increase the storage limit applied to the shared drive.
● Shared drive limits do not prevent users from creating more shared drives. To restrict users
from creating more shared drives and using up the domain-wide storage pool, see Sharing
settings: audit shared drive creation and migration settings in this guide.

To set a shared drive limit on shared drives in the top-level or child organizational unit:
1. Navigate to the Google Admin console.
2. In the Admin console, select Storage.
3. In the Storage settings section, click Manage.
4. Click Shared drive storage limit.
5. At the left, click the organizational unit with the shared drives you want a storage limit policy
applied to.
6. Select On, and enter the amount of storage each shared drive in that organizational unit can
use.
7. Click Save. If you set a limit for a child organizational unit after setting a limit for its parent
organizational unit, click Override. If some shared drives already exceed the storage limit,
admins will receive a warning.
Analysis of storage utilization – additional options
The reporting tools described in this section can be used to gain insight into storage usage
domain-wide, important for being adequately prepared for the July 2022 storage limits. Following
these steps, admins will gain a better understanding of how to clean up existing data and
communicate with users on remediation steps that can be taken before storage deadlines.

User storage
Highlights reports - overall domain usage & growth over time
This option is available for all Workspace for Education editions.

To identify the pattern of storage growth over time, establish the pattern over 6 months then multiply
by 2 to estimate the storage growth over the year. The following section tells you how to analyze the
domain-wide storage use for a 6-month timeframe.

1. From the Admin Console Home page, click on Reports and navigate to ‘What’s the storage
being used?’ panel. This panel will detail total Gmail, Drive, and Photos storage used for all
users domain-wide.

2. Click on View details for more information. The following itemized storage details are available:

● ‘Storage used by apps’ - details total storage for all users in your domain broken down by
‘Gmail storage used’, ‘Drive storage used’, and ‘Photos storage used’. Check and uncheck
each item to see individual domain-wide totals for each service.
 ● ‘Total storage used’ - details total Gmail, Drive, and Photos storage for all users in your
domain.

3. Download a report to sheets to view aggregate numbers for any of these options over the last 6
months.

Account reports – determine current usage by users

This option is available for all Workspace for Education editions.

From the Admin Console Home page, click Reports > User Reports > Accounts.

Using the ‘Manage columns’ icon in the upper right corner of the table, be sure the
following minimum columns are selected / visible:
● User account status

● Gmail storage used (MB)

● Drive storage used (MB)

● Photos storage used (MB)

● Total storage used (MB)

Optional columns to select in order to gain insight into how active an account is:
● Gmail (IMAP) - last used time

● Gmail (POP) - last used time

● Gmail (Web) - last used time

● Drive - last active time

● Classroom - last used time

Optional columns to select to determine sharing implications around account removal:

● Public

● Anyone with link

● Anyone in domain shares

● Anyone in domain with link shares

● Outside domain
 ● Within domain shares

Once all relevant columns are chosen, select filters to limit the output to under 100,000
records (the limit on exporting this data to Google Sheets). Options for filters include:
● Organizational Unit - filter on a student or staff OU

● Group - to isolate high usage customers for targeted communications

● User account status - to isolate total storage used by suspended accounts

● Total storage used (MB) - to isolate top users, such as all users over 50 GB (50000 MB)

● Gmail storage used (MB) - to isolate top Gmail users for targeted communications

● Drive storage used (MB) - to isolate top Drive users for targeted communications

● Photos storage used (MB) - to isolate top Photos users for targeted communications

Once desired filters have been selected, you can download selected columns into a Google
Sheets file.

Shared drive storage

Highlights reports – overall shared drive usage within domain
This option is available for all Workspace for Education editions.

From the Admin Console Home page, click on Reports and navigate to ‘What’s the storage being
used?’ panel. Note that shared drive storage is not reflected in this panel. Click on View details for
more information on total shared drive storage.

Storage used by apps - details total storage for all shared drives domain-wide. Check only Shared
Drive storage used to highlight only shared drive storage. Download the report to Google Sheets to
view aggregate numbers over the last 180 days.
Sharing settings – audit shared drive creation & migration settings
It is essential that admins of Workspace for Education domains audit shared drive creation and
management settings in order to ensure shared drives in the domain are used in accordance with
best practices. See this Help Center documentation for more information.

To view members of individual shared drives:

1. From the Admin Console Home page, click on Apps > Google Workspace > Drive and Docs >
Manage shared drives

2. Sort the largest share drives to the top of the list, then highlight the desired shared drive and
select Manage members

3. Quickly scan through the membership list to get a sense of how many external groups and
consumer accounts (@[Link]) are members of the shared drive

To limit access to an already created shared drive:

1. In Apps > Google Workspace > Drive and Docs > Manage shared drives, sort the largest
shared drives to the top of the list, highlight the desired shared drive and select Settings

2. For the most restrictive settings, uncheck all options under Shared drive settings, including
Allow managers to modify shared drive settings

3. Select Done

To audit settings for all newly shared drives created in the domain:
1. From the Admin Console Home page, click on Apps > Google Workspace > Drive and Docs >
Sharing settings
2. In the left-hand panel, select an OU or group to apply shared drive setting defaults. For example
a ‘Students’ OU

3. Select Shared drive creation. These are the default settings for all newly created shared
drives and will not affect settings on existing shared drives.

4. For the most restrictive settings, check Prevent users in domain from creating new shared
drives and uncheck all other settings (see screenshot below). Recommendation is to limit
shared drive creation and control to admins of the domain and apply access to shared drives
through permissions on the individual shared drives.

5. Select Save

Admins also have the ability to restrict or allow the migration of data into Shared Drives.
See this Help Center documentation for more information:
1. From the Admin Console Home page, click on Apps > Google Workspace > Drive and Docs >
Migration Settings

2. In the left-hand panel, select an OU or group

3. To allow users to migrate data into a shared drive, check Allow users to migrate files to
shared drives. To disallow users to migrate data into a shared drive, uncheck this option.
Remediation – admin-driven
User Storage
One way to remove data stored in a user’s account is to delete the account, which also removes all
Vault data associated with the account. Additionally, Admins can enable Takeout to give users the
option to download a copy of data stored in the account or to transfer Drive and Gmail data to a
personal account. For more information on settings to enable Google Takeout for users, see this Help
Center documentation.

For user driven remediation steps of data stored in Gmail, Drive, and Photos, see the ‘Remediation -
User Driven’ section in this guide.

Shared drive storage

Storage tools – sort & delete shared drives
This option is available for all Workspace for Education editions.

With the release of the storage tools in the Admin Console, admins now have the ability to sort the
list of shared drives by size and delete shared drives that are no longer needed.

Caution - This option removes all data stored in the Shared Drive, including the Shared Drive.
Data is able to be restored up to 25 days after deletion date, after that time it is permanently
removed.

To remove a shared drive and the contents within:

1. From the Admin Console Home page, click on Apps > Google Workspace > Drive and Docs >
Manage shared drives, to view a list of all shared drives for the domain

2. (Optional) Click Add a filter of No members to list all shared drives with no members

3. Next to the Storage used column’, click the arrow to sort all shared drives by size, ascending to
descending

4. Hover over the desired shared drive. Select the More menu on the far right and click Delete.
(Optional) Clicking Restore in the menu will restore any Shared Drive that has been deleted
within the last 25 days
1. In the Delete shared drive window, confirm understanding that items will be permanently
deleted and click DELETE SHARED DRIVE

2. The Shared Drive will register as ‘Deleted’ under the status column. To remove visibility of all
deleted shared drives from this view, select Add a Filter and select Status as Active
Remediation – user-driven

User experience - near or at quota limits

When users reach the storage limit set by admins on the account, access to the services such
as Drive, Gmail, and Photos will be affected in the following ways:

● Gmail: Users will still be able to send and receive email.

● Drive: You won’t be able to sync or upload new files. You will not be able to create new files in
Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, Forms, and Jamboard. Until storage is reduced, owners
won’t be able to edit or copy the files affected by the storage quota set; collaborators won’t be
able to edit the affected files. Syncs stop between your computer's Google Drive folder and My
Drive.

● Photos: You won’t be able to add any more or back up existing photos or videos.

When a user’s account is 80%-100% full, in-app notifications will be visible in both Drive, Photos,
and Drive for Desktop to warn users of disruption of these services.

For instance, within Google Drive the following will be displayed when storage is full for an account:

When users click on Manage Storage within Google Drive, they will see the following banners
when 80% and 100% full:
For Photos, the following banner notification will be displayed when storage is 80% and 100%
full for the account:

For Drive for Desktop, the following desktop notification will be displayed when storage
is 80% and 100% full for the account:

See the following sections - ‘Moving data to personal Drive/Google One’ and ‘Find large files to
delete’ in this guide - for more information on how admins can discuss options users have to remove
data from their accounts.

Moving data to personal Drive/Google One

This option is available for all Workspace for Education editions.

Users have two options to copy their data before their account - or the data within the
account - is removed (when Takeout is enabled by admins):
1. Users can download a copy of their data in an archive format. See this Help Center
Documentation for more information.

2. Users can transfer a copy of Gmail and Drive contents to another Google account, for instance
students leaving a school or University. See this Help Center Documentation for more
information.

To download user data from a school account:

1. Go to the Takeout page

2. Select the individual services that contain the data you would like to download or select all
services. If there are important services that are not listed, for instance Blogger or YouTube,
reach out to your school administrator

3. Some services have different options regarding specifics of export. For example:

a. The Calendar service has options to select all calendars or individual calendars

b. The Drive service has options to export Docs and Spreadsheets into Microsoft formats or
PDFs

c. The Photo service has the option to select all Photo albums or individual albums

4. Once all services and options within those services are selected, click Next step

5. Under Choose file type, frequency & destination choose a Delivery method. Available
options include:

a. Download link via email

b. Add to Drive (not recommended if the intent is to remove data from Gmail, Drive, and
Photos)

c. Add to Dropbox

d. Add to OneDrive

e. Add to Box

6. Select Export once

7. Select File type & size, either .zip or .tgz archive files

8. Select archive file size, up to 50GB per file

9. Select Create export

a. If Dropbox, OneDrive, or Box were selected in step 5 above, select Link accounts and
create export. This will redirect to a sign-in page for the service selected

10. An email will be sent once the export process has completed. Depending on the delivery
method selected above, exports can be managed and downloads can be accessed under the
Manage your exports section of Google Takeout.

To transfer Gmail and Drive data to another account from school accounts:
1. In the school account ([Link]), go to Transfer your content under Data and
privacy and select Start transfer
2. Enter the destination email address of the Google Account to copy content to

3. Select SEND CODE

4. In the destination Google Account, check the Gmail inbox for a confirmation email from Google
entitled ‘Verify your account’. In the email, select Get confirmation code. A new tab will open
with a code. The code will be valid for 24 hours.

5. On your school account, go back to the Transfer your content page. Enter the code, then
choose Verify.

6. Choose the content you'd like to copy, then click START TRANSFER.
 7. Once started, both email accounts will receive an email confirming the transfer process is in
progress. To view transfer progress and the history of transfers from the last 30 days, click
VIEW HISTORY.

Find large files to delete

This option is available for all Workspace for Education editions.

Users can navigate to [Link] to see overall storage numbers in

Drive, Gmail, and Photos. This narrows the focus to the service that needs the most immediate
attention.

To remove large or unnecessary files in Drive and Shared Drives:

1. Go to [Link]

○ This webpage can also be accessed through Drive Settings > Manage Storage

2. Sort by ‘Storage used’ column to view your largest files

3. Delete files as needed

4. Files count toward the overall storage limit of the account until they are removed from Trash in
30 days.

To expedite this process, navigate to ‘Trash’ on the left, right-click an individual file / folder and
select Delete forever or select Empty trash in the upper right to purge all files / folders.
Confirm by clicking Delete forever.

5. If files have been copied to Shared Drives, scan through the contents of accessible Shared
Drives and trash files as needed as this data may be consuming twice the storage space.
To begin removing data from gmail, consider the following options:
1. Searching for large emails by typing ‘has:attachment larger:10M’ in the Search box, selecting
the emails not needed from the results, and selecting the Delete icon

2. Searching for emails before a specific date by typing ‘before:enter date’, selecting the emails
not needed from the results, and selecting the Delete icon

3. Remove all items from the Spam folder by clicking the checkbox for all messages and selecting
Delete forever

4. Emails will still count toward the overall storage limit of an account until they are removed from
Trash in 30 days. To expedite this process, navigate to Trash on the left, select all messages in
Trash, then select Empty Trash now.
Sample communication templates
Below are several email templates that you can customize and use to inform your
users about storage limits and the actions required of them to meet their limits.

To notify high-storage users

[Note for admins] You can customize this email by including how much storage each person is using.
You can find this information by following these steps.

Subject: Important: Please reduce your overall storage usage

Hi,

Your account has been identified as consuming a large amount of Google storage.

Google recently announced that new storage limits for Google Workspace for Education (formerly
known as G Suite for Education) will take effect in July 2022. Currently, you have unlimited storage
for Google Drive, Gmail, and Google Photos. In order to prepare, we need you to review your current
storage usage and delete any unnecessary files in Drive, Gmail, and Photos.

You are one of the largest users of our storage in our institution, so we wanted to check in with you
to learn more about your storage needs.

Please complete the following steps:

1. To confirm how much storage you’re using, go to [Link]

2. To review and delete large or unnecessary files in Drive, go to

[Link]

3. To review and delete large or unnecessary files in shared drives, go to

[Link]

4. Consider deleting Drive content that you may have copied to a shared drive. If a file resides in 2
locations, it may be consuming twice the storage space.

5. To search for and delete unnecessary or large emails, go to Manage files in your Google Drive
storage and follow instructions for Gmail.

6. And finally, if you have larger storage needs due to projects, data sets, film production, etc.
please reach out to us so we can explore other Google Cloud storage options.
[Remove if not applicable] Please review our institution's Acceptable Use Policy [Link to your
Acceptable Use Policy] and make sure you're storing data in accordance with our policies.

These steps will be voluntary through June 2022. In July 2022, we will implement storage limits on all
users in our organization. Please complete the steps above as soon as possible.

We’ll share more information, including your specific storage limit, later this year.

Thank you,

Your friendly IT team

To notify users of the storage limits being enforced

[Note for admins] You can customize this email by including how much storage each person is using.
You can find this information by following these steps.

Subject: New storage limit will be implemented on your account

Hi,

Your account will be moving to a new storage limit of [enter storage amount here] on [enter date
here].

In 2021, Google announced that new storage limits for Google Workspace for Education will take
effect in July 2022. In preparation for these changes, Workspace admins will be implementing
storage limits across all accounts to ensure domain-wide limits are maintained in line with this new
storage policy for Google Workspace for Education.

The new storage limit for your account will apply to Google Drive, Gmail, and Google Photos.

To review how much storage you’re using in each service, go to

[Link] To delete any unnecessary files in Drive, Gmail, and
Photos, please complete the following steps:
1. To review storage usage in relation to quota and delete large or unnecessary files in Drive, go to
[Link]

2. To review and delete large or unnecessary files in shared drives, go to

[Link]

3. Consider deleting Drive content that you may have copied to a shared drive. If a file resides in 2
locations, it may be consuming twice the storage space.

4. To search for and delete unnecessary or large emails, go to Manage files in your Google Drive
storage and follow the instructions for Gmail.

5. [Remove if not applicable] Google Takeout has been enabled for Drive, Gmail, and Photos. Use
this service to export an archive of your Drive, Gmail, and Photos data. Note, exporting an
archive of your data does not remove the data from your school account. Follow the
instructions below for the two options for downloading your data:

a. Download your data into an archive

 b. Copy your data to another Google Account

[Remove if not applicable] Please review our institution's Acceptable Use Policy [Link to your
institution's Acceptable Use Policy] and make sure you're using data in accordance with our policies.

After [enter date here], you will need to maintain shared storage across Drive, Gmail, and Photos to
ensure access to these services. If your account runs out of storage the following will occur until you
free up additional space within these services:

● Gmail: Users will still be able to send and receive email.

● Drive: You will not be able to sync or upload new files. You will not be able to create new files in
Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, Forms, and Jamboard. Until storage is reduced, owners
won’t be able to edit or copy the files affected by the storage quota set; collaborators won’t be
able to edit the affected files. Syncs stop between your computer's Google Drive folder and My
Drive.

● Photos: You will not be able to add or back up existing photos or videos.

For further questions or clarifications around this policy, please reach out to your IT Help Desk Team.

Thank you,

Your friendly IT team

Resource list
Below is a list of Google and third-party resources to assist admins in managing storage across
Workspace for Education editions. Not everything listed below was mentioned in this guide.

Google help center documentation

Understanding Storage Limits
● How licensing works

Storage Management resources

● Customize service settings with configuration groups

● Groups API Property Overview

● Groups: update method Overview

● Managing Google Workspace for Education Storage as an admin (YT video)

Analysis of Storage Utilization - All Workspace for Education Editions

● Highlights Report - What’s the storage being used? / What’s the 30-day unique login
count?

● User reports: Accounts

● Drive log events

● Improved audit and investigation experience

● Control access to files and folders in shared drives

● Move content to a shared drive

Analysis of Storage Utilization - Workspace for Education Standard and Plus only
● About reporting logs and BigQuery

● Example queries for reporting logs in BigQuery

● Drive log events - Security investigation tool

● File exposure report - Security dashboard

● Create a custom chart based on an investigation

● Create and manage activity rules

Remediation
● Delete your organization’s Google Account
● Turn Google Takeout on or off for users

● Options to preserve former employee data

● How to download your Google data

● Copy content from your school account to another account

● Graduation log events

● Use groups to customize service access

● Transfer Drive files to a new owner

● Add an account for a new user

● Retain Gmail messages with Vault

● Retain files in Drive with Vault

● Manage files in Google Drive storage

● Manage your Google Workspace storage

● Drive storage FAQ for admins

Google tools
● Google Workspace for Education Storage Report

Third-party / open source tools

Important: Google Cloud Support doesn’t support third-party solutions. We support the
Admin SDK Directory API those tools use. Other third-party solutions are subject to their own
terms of use.

Working with Google Workspace APIs

● Exponential backoff

● Working with quotas

Amplified IT / Gopher for Drive

● Blog - Google Workspace Storage Limits are Coming

● Blog - Getting Google Workspace Storage Usage

● Blog - Reducing Google Workspace Storage Usage / Data Studio template

● Gopher for Drive - Terms of Use

● Install Gopher for Drive

● Domain level reports

● Drive level reports

● Shared Drive level reports

GAM / GAMADV-XTD3
● Apache 2.0 license

● Installations instructions for GAM

● Installation instructions for GAMADV-XTD3

● GAM - Who Can Leave Group

● GAM - Bulk processing

● GAMADV-XTD3 - Bulk processing

● GAMADV-XTD3 - Scripts to work with Drive ACLs

● GAMADV-XTD3 Wiki - Shared Drives

Kincaid IT / Kit Central

● Kit Central Storage+ / Kit Central Admin+