You might see that the Dropbox Community team have been busy working on some major updates to the Community itself! So, here is some info on what’s changed, what’s staying the same and what you can expect from the Dropbox Community overall.
Forum Discussion
Migrate files to Google Drive vs. convert to Microsoft Office files?
I got an email that says "Google files in Dropbox will be replaced with shortcuts to documents in Google Drive" and "If you do not wish to move your Google files to your Google account, they will be ...
Hey lisa40, thanks for posting your question to the Dropbox Community!
What will happen when this migration takes place, is that your Google files will become .web files in Dropbox that point to the same file in Google Drive, so you can edit and share the file through Google directly.
If you decide to not migrate them and they get converted to MS Office files, you can still edit them online, using the corresponding MS Office app for the web, through our website.
So, this is basically up to you and how you prefer to edit and share your files.
Let me know if you have any questions.
Hi, I had a few questions about this migration happening on August 14th:
- Firstly, I understand .gdoc and other Google file formats will be moved to Google Drive. Currently, we block the creation of Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides due to company compliance. (In our Google Admin center, we have unchecked the box that states "Allow users to create new Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings and Forms files. Collaboration on existing files won’t be affected." So my question is, how would these files be moved and created in Google Drive? Currently we do not have any Google Workspace licenses assigned to any of our users since Dropbox is our official company cloud storage. According to Google, a Workspace license is required to collaborate on Docs, Sheets, and Slides. Many of our users have been collaborating on .gdocs and .gsheets within Dropbox for years and not only will this change be confusing, there is a possibility of data loss since the files are moving to Drive which is current prevented due to company compliance via Google Admin control.
- Secondly, is there a way to force all of our Dropbox users to convert files into Office documents? I understand I am the admin so I was sent a warning, but in order to stay within compliance, we cannot have any of our users store files that used to be in Dropbox, within Google Drive. I cannot guarantee folks will follow these steps, so I would like to know how to force the MS Office conversion on Aug 14, instead of moving the files to Google Drive.
- Finally, is there a way to test migrating some of these Docs and Sheets? Just so I can understand the user experience and data loss risk before the migration on August 14. I tried making a new Google Doc, using their API and I received a 500: Internal Server Error so I am concerned that when the files migrate, they will yield the same response error. Is that how you will be moving the files to Drive? I also tried to move a test file by creating a Google Docs document, slicking Save As... and selecting Google Docs Shortcut... and I received an error "Untitled (2).gdoc couldn't be saved to Google Drive (Server error)."
Please advise. We prefer to let the files convert to MS Office files since every employee has an Office 365 license, but I cannot seem to find an easy path to doing so so that's why I'm asking here.
Thanks,
Brian
