[Action Advised] Prepare for Google Drive permissions migration starting March 2026

[Kim_Nilsson]

You have probably received this in your email.

The upcoming change in how Drive handles permissions should not negatively impact your consciious work to restrict users' access to individual content.

/Kim

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Dear Google Workspace for Education administrator,

Our records indicate that your organization owns Google Drive items where the item-level access is more restricted than the parent folder. These restrictions may have been set with the Google Drive sharing dialog, Google Classroom, an Apps Script, or an API client.

We’re writing to inform you that we’re automatically migrating these items to the new limited access setting without any change to the item-level access. This migration will begin in March 2026.

We’ve provided additional information below to guide you through this change.

What this means for your organization

Key changes:

Last year, we introduced a new access management feature in Google Drive. As part of this simplified experience, the Google Drive sharing dialog requires the limited access setting to support:

• Deleting inherited permissions
• Updating the role to be less permissive than the inherited role

Existing items with restricted access will automatically be migrated to the new limited access setting. There will be no change to who can see or access the item.

Potential impact:

• Inheritance changes: After the migration to limited access, permission changes made to parent folders will no longer affect the items with restricted access
• User interface changes: After the migration to limited access, users will see a new sharing dialog experience when sharing updated items

What you need to do

Action advised:

1. Before March 2026, become familiar with the limited access setting and user interface.
   • The limited access feature has been available since February 2025
   • For some of your organization's users, these updated items will likely be their first experience with the limited access interface
2. After the migration, audit items that were moved to limited access.
   • Google Admin console: Query Drive log events for "Inherited permissions disabled" by "Google System". This search will find both migrated and non-migrated items with limited access.
   • Drive inventory reports (where available): Use the Export your Organization’s Drive Inventory documentation and the label ID Redacted because I don't know if that is unique to our organisation to identify the migrated items. Refer to the schema and example queries documentation for guidance.
   • Drive search: Users can audit their files using the search operators is:limitedaccess and owner:me. This search will find both migrated and non-migrated items with limited access.
   • Note: Google Classroom behavior will not be impacted by this migration.

Timeline:

• March 2026: The automatic migration to limited access will begin

Thanks for choosing Google Workspace for Education.

– The Google Workspace for Education Team