Archive a Shared Drive to Viewer-Only

Setting a Shared Drive to “Viewer” at the top level often does not freeze everything. Google Drive changes may only touch the first‑level membership. Changes made at the Shared Drive level typically apply only to people added to the drive itself; they don’t automatically remove permissions granted directly on subfolders/files or via Google Groups. People can still retain edit/comment rights via file‑level shares, nested/Google Groups, or external collaborators who were granted access directly, leaving security and compliance gaps when you think a drive is archived.

You want to "freeze" a Google Shared Drive so that no one can edit, delete, move, or comment, everyone can only view. Folgo can fix that.

Folgo closes common Google Drive permission gaps by auditing every effective permission (drive, folder, file, and group‑based) and then enforces Viewer‑only across the entire drive using a single system account, so nothing can be edited, moved, commented on, or deleted, while content remains intact.

Use Cases

Freeze a team knowledge base after a reorganisation or handover
Lock a delivered project drive to preserve the record
Legal hold / records retention and compliance snapshots
M&A due diligence or external audits (immutable view‑only state)
Year‑end archival for finance/compliance
Security hardening: eliminate permission drift and file‑level overrides

When you archive a Shared Drive with Folgo, the script:

Audits every permission on the drive (managers, contributors, commenters, viewers, groups, external accounts, and file‑level overrides).
Replaces or clears elevated roles and sets everyone to Viewer.
Runs these changes via a single system account.
Leaves content intact (no files are deleted or moved) while preventing new edits.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have the following:

Admin tasks: Admin tasks must be set up on Folgo.
Administrative Access: You must have admin privileges on Folgo.

Step-by-step Instructions

Step 1: Open Folgo in Google Drive and start an audit

In Google Drive, click the Folgo icon on the right sidebar to open the interface.

Click Audit content & access.

Step 2 : Choose the Shared Drive and configure audit options

In the Folgo panel, make sure Corpus is set to Shared Drive.
Manually select the Shared Drive you want to freeze by simply clicking on it.
Items: choose Everything (recommended) or Non‑members only, depending on your scope.
Check List files permissions (lists editors, commenters, viewers etc.).
Click Audit.

Step 3: Review the Google Sheets report

Open the Google Sheets report Folgo generates.
View Permission Recap tab to list all users in the drive by domain, with totals for owners, editors, commenters, viewers accesses.

View Access Lookup: select an individual user to view all content (folders and files) they can edit, comment, or view across the audited scope.

Step 4: Secure the content

Open Folgo from Google Sheets and click Secure content.

Select all the users for whom you want to change permissions, manually from the spreadsheet.

Action: choose Set to viewer.

Click on set users to Viewer to confirm.

All done! The Shared Drive is now effectively view‑only for those users and edits/comments are blocked.

Conclusion

By pairing a full permissions audit with quick and guided enforcement, Folgo turns archiving into a fast, reliable freeze. In minutes you gain complete visibility into who can access what and convert an entire Shared Drive to Viewer-only, reducing the risk of unauthorized edits, comments, or data leakage.