Google Drive to SharePoint Online Migration Guide for IT Admins

1. Introduction

Is your company planning to migrate Google Drive to SharePoint Online? If so, CloudFuze can automate the entire migration while helping your company keep technical issues at bay.

Unlike other migration tools, CloudFuze approaches business migrations in a holistic way, taking care of every minor aspect of company data.

As an IT admin or manager, you can take actionable insights from this guide. But if you are short on time, directly contact our migration team or watch this migration video:

2. Google Drive vs SharePoint

Google Drive does not share many similarities with SharePoint Online as it does with OneDrive. This is because SharePoint Online is more than just a storage drive. It is a centralized hub for public and private libraries. SharePoint Online also functions as an intranet; it is through SharePoint link of every file and folder that seamless sharing becomes possible.

Companies planning to migrate from Google Drive to SharePoint benefit from SharePoint Online in these crucial areas:

• Consolidation of shareable content in private and public libraries
• Automatic creation of file/folder SharePoint links that works with all Microsoft 365 apps
• Seamless syncing with Microsoft Teams
• Simple shortcuts for OneDrive content access

3. Google Drive to SharePoint Online Migration Challenges

When migrating data from Google Drive to SharePoint, the responsibility can be upon you (the IT admin or manager) to manage migration provisions that bridge the differences between Google Drive and SharePoint.

For example, unlike Google Drive, SharePoint Online has Sites as libraries. And since the paths of multiple Sites are different from each other, it is important to make sure that the migration platform can migrate files from Google Drive (or from Google Sites) to multiple SharePoint Online Sites.

Migrating to one SharePoint Site

Migrating to multiple SharePoint Sites (notice the differences in paths)

The larger the company data size, the more challenging it gets to migrate Google Drive to SharePoint Online. And it is usually not the sheer volume of data that poses migration challenges but rather the intricacies of the features, such as permissions, shared links, and embedded links.

Even the most minor feature of company data plays a crucial role in maintaining operational efficiency which translates to higher ROIs. For example, migrating embedded links can help cut the time needed to refer to internal or external resources.

Retaining document comments when migrating from Google Drive to Microsoft SharePoint can help the operations team keep track of the workflow in the documents.

At CloudFuze, we understand the pain points of businesses in every step of the migration journey, be it readying source and destination clouds, sorting out users, or making incremental changes.

Working with SMBs, including Source Global, PBC, and Richardson Sales Performance, for Google Drive to SharePoint migration has helped us gain a good understanding of what it takes to securely and strategically move sensitive high-volume company data.

With our industry-leading solutions that comply with all standard security regulations, including GDPR, SOC 2 Type 2, and ISO 27001, you can ensure a highly secure Google Drive migration to SharePoint Online for your organization. Our team also offers end-to-end support in strategizing, executing, and validating the migration.

4. CloudFuze’s Managed Google Drive to SharePoint Migration

At CloudFuze, we never approach cloud migration (including Google Workspace to Office 365 migration) with a one-size-fits-all solution because every business has different migration needs. We bolster our bespoke migration services in a properly managed way.

We approach business migrations on a project basis to structure the entire migration process. Doing this is a win-win for us and our clients; we get to work in the most efficient and result-oriented way, and our clients get to make the most out of their migration budget.

Let us know your company’s migration needs and learn how CloudFuze can work to your benefit.

5. CloudFuze vs. Other Migration Tools

CloudFuze’s X-Change migration platform is best suited for enterprises, SMBs, and MSPs with the need to extensively transfer users and data along with critical features, such as sharing permissions and timestamps.

This table highlights the differences between CloudFuze’s Google Drive to SharePoint migration tool and competitor migration tools:

Our industry-leading tool functionalities make the process of comprehensively switching from Google Drive to SharePoint Online effortless for businesses of all sizes across all industries. As an IT manager, you get to access the most advanced functionalities and leverage our proven methodologies that have created migration success stories for some of the world’s largest enterprises.

6. How Does CloudFuze Transfer Permissions From Google Drive to SharePoint

CloudFuze helps companies moving files from Google Drive to SharePoint transfer permissions accurately, and that too, to the correct user roles in SharePoint Online. The below table highlights the way CloudFuze transfers permissions from Google Drive to SharePoint Online.

7. Steps to Migrate Google Drive to SharePoint Online

Migrate files from Google Drive to SharePoint Online with these step-by-step processes. The steps also work for migrating Teams Drive to SharePoint.

Step 1: Create a CloudFuze Account

As a business user, you can go to CloudFuze webapp and create an account with your business email ID to test the service. Please keep in mind that CloudFuze also provides enterprise trial accounts with more features for customers with complex and mission-critical migration needs.

Step 2: Authorize the Source Cloud

To transfer Google Drive to SharePoint, you first need to add the cloud to CloudFuze. Just click on the Google My Drive logo listed in the business clouds category.

A pop-up will then appear where you need to enter your Google Workspace admin login credentials.

Once entered, click on the “Allow” button.

Step 3: Add the Destination Cloud

Click on the SharePoint Online logo in the business clouds list and enter your company’s Microsoft 365 global admin credentials to authorize it.

Step 4: Verify Cloud Addition Process

Once both clouds are added, go to the Clouds section and click on the Manage Clouds tab. You should be able to see both Google Drive and SharePoint Online.

Step 5: Click on the Team Migration

The next step is to start the actual process to move Google Drive to SharePoint. To initiate migration, click on the Team Migration icon in the menu bar on the left.

Step 6: Choose Your Source and Destination Clouds

Select Google Drive as the source and SharePoint Online as the destination cloud.

Step 7: Sync Migration Pairs

CloudFuze supports both automatic and manual mapping of users. The Auto-map functionality matches all the users in Google My Drive and SharePoint Online based on their email aliases.

If your organization needs content to be migrated between different users, CSV or manual migration is the right option.

Step 8: Select Users and Proceed

Select a few or all the users that you want to migrate to SharePoint Online from Google Drive. In this demo, we migrated the data of one user.

Step 9: Choose Google Drive to SharePoint Migration Options

You can give a name to the migration job. By default, the job type is one-time. If you are trying to migrate incremental changes after a primary migration, you need to choose Delta as a job type.

You can also add more email IDs here to get migration updates and notifications.

Check out the Migrate Shared Content option if you would like to migrate Shared Drive content as well. The other options in the page can be left default.

Step 10: Preview and Start the Migration

Check everything on the preview page and ensure all the parameters are set correctly. Click on the Start Migration button to migrate Google Drive to SharePoint Online.

Step 11: Migration Is in Progress

During the initial phases of the migration, the status will show up as “In-Queue”. You can download the migration report by clicking on the download button.

You can also add more email IDs here to get migration updates and notifications.

Step 12: Migration Has Been Completed

Once the migration is completed, the status will be displayed as “Completed”.

8. Google Drive to SharePoint Online FAQ

1. How are Google files, Docs, Slides, and Sheets migrated to SharePoint?

CloudFuze migrates Google Docs, Google Slides, Google Sheets as respective Microsoft 365 files, including Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Microsoft Excel to SharePoint Online.

2. Does delta migration create Google Drive file and folder duplicates?

No. With CloudFuze, you’ll have your changes in files updated to the same files that have been migrated to SharePoint during delta migration.

3. Will migrating files from Google Drive to multiple SharePoint Online Sites lengthen the overall migration time?

Not necessarily. It’s not the number of SharePoint Online Sites that determine the needed migration time but rather the volume of company data. The more company data to be migrated, the longer the migration process will be. This is true when moving files from Team Drive to SharePoint.

4. Is there a way to perform Google Drive to SharePoint migration outside of a SaaS server?

Yes. With CloudFuze, you get the option to install CloudFuze as a standalone program and run it into your data center or perform the migration in a dedicated hosting server. You can go for either of these two options if you feel that SaaS server migration will jeopardize your company data sensitivity.

5. How to transfer Google Drive data of an ex-employee to the SharePoint account of his/her replacement?

Doing this gets simple and hassle-free with CloudFuze. During the mapping step, you can simply map the user account of the ex-employee to the SharePoint user account of his or her replacement. You can do this through manual mapping or CSV files.

6. Will the data size be the same after Google Drive to SharePoint migration is complete?

In most cases, the overall company data size can be a bit low after Google Drive to SharePoint Online migration mostly due to cloud compression. However, the slight reduction in size will not affect the data or its attributes.

7. Will there be any API throttling issue for high-volume Google Drive to SharePoint Online migration?

If more data is migrated than the limit allowed by cloud providers in a given time frame, API throttling can occur. In this type of scenario, it’s best to comply with the waiting time that the cloud providers will set. 

8. How to move files from Google Drive to SharePoint as well as OneDrive?

If you need to migrate your company’s data to SharePoint Online as well as OneDrive, CloudFuze offers the solution to include both destinations in the scope of work.

9. How are comments in Google Drive files migrated to SharePoint?

CloudFuze migrates comments in Google Drive files through CSV files to SharePoint Online.

10. Which is best: cut or copy files from Google Drive to SharePoint?

Copying files from Google Drive to SharePoint Online is safer than moving them. CloudFuze uses copy-and-paste action during migration and not cut-and-paste action.