For over a decade, Google has tried to win over Microsoft Office users. The one advantage the Google G Suite of productivity apps once had over Microsoft Office was simpler file sharing and better real-time collaboration on documents. By storing Google Documents in the cloud-based Google Drive, users could in one click share the document with anyone inside or outside an organization. Called “co-authoring,” this enabled or more people to edit the shared document in real time.

Basically, it permits the user to archive business data from G Suite products such as Google Drive, Google Teams Drive, Gmail, Google Groups etc. Sometimes, due to specific business requirements the user needs to migrate Google Vault to Office 365. However, users are not able to find a simple yet perfect approach to implement Google Vault data. Collaborate for free with online versions of Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote. Save documents, spreadsheets, and presentations online, in OneDrive. For Office 365 tenants with 500 or more licenses: FastTrack provides migration guidance and data migration services. We provide guidance to help you plan your migration, configure your source environments and Office 365 tenant, and leverage our data migration services to migrate your data. You create and schedule your migration events. Office 365 Business Premium: Complete Office access with unlimited storage at $15/month/user. Conversely, Google Drive pricing plans consist of the following: Free Plan: Enjoy 15 GB storage space without paying a single dime. Just like photos and Office file types, the Google files open in Outlook next to your message window so your work flow is not disrupted. And, as with Google Drive links, if you have edit permissions, you’ll be able to edit using the full functionality available on Google Drive—again, all without leaving Outlook.

However, the co-authoring advantage didn’t last long for Google as Microsoft quickly added similar functionality to its cloud-based Office 365 suite to close the gap. The most recent cloud storage and collaboration features added by Microsoft make a compelling case for Google G Suite users to switch to Office 365. They’re confident enough to offer companies using Google (and Box or Dropbox cloud storage) free access to Microsoft OneDrive for Business for the remainder of their contracts with the other file-sharing providers—essentially buying them out from competitors. But should your company make such a move?

At Amaxra, we’ve worked with both Google G Suite and Microsoft Office 365 to best understand the pros and cons of each. We’ve also heard how numerous business customers—from startups to enterprises—have gone from Office 365 to G Suite (and often back again). With the latest updates, we believe users of Google G Suite should move to Microsoft Office 365 for three big reasons:

Office 365 has a better price-performance ratio than G Suite

Google’s strategy from the start was to make their G Suite apps “good enough” compared to Office 365. Because their primary business model is to serve advertising on Internet searches, Google could offer their G Suite apps for a couple of dollars per month less than Microsoft Office 365. By undercutting Microsoft on price and offering the flashy co-authoring feature, Google was able to convince some budget-conscious companies to switch. However, these companies quickly learned the lower price didn’t equate to the superior performance of Microsoft Office apps.

An IT professional at a midsize networking software company relayed to me how they were sold on Google G Suite for no other reason than it was $2 cheaper per month than Office 365. Her company was at the end of their onsite licensing agreement for Microsoft Office and wanted to move to the cloud. Google showed the company how paying $2 per month less across almost 500 seats meant tens of thousands in savings over a typical Office 365 contract. However, the IT pro notes that $2 per seat savings was quickly exceeded by the labor, consulting fees, and value-add services to migrate Microsoft Outlook email to Gmail and moving files stored in highly-structured and centralized Microsoft SharePoint folders to unstructured personal Google Drive storage accounts. In addition, she noted the company had to buy Microsoft Office licenses for their finance department (who revolted against a mandate forcing the usage of Google Sheets) and employees in key customer-facing roles who objectively noted the Google alternatives to Microsoft Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint were nowhere near feature parity.

OneDrive + SharePoint is centralized with “in-place” file recovery

We have written about the many benefits of Microsoft SharePoint and OneDrive For Business cloud storage in previous blogs. In Office 365, every user by default receives their own personal allotment of OneDrive For Business cloud storage. For secure structured storage of files for teams, there’s SharePoint. But in Google G Suite, users are given their personal Google Drive storage and there’s no analogue to SharePoint. Although it is simple to share and collaborate on files in Google Drive, the lack of structured file storage often causes problems with team file ownership.

An example of this was when a marketing professional told me how he attempted to organize a folder on his Google Drive for his team. He then shared the folder with his team as their “Marketing Drive,” given each member edit permissions for their own subfolders. For over a year, the marketing team had moved files onto the Google Drive because it was the only way to have a collaborative space for the team. In an attempt to clean up what appeared to be redundant files in his personal Google Drive, the marketing professional accidentally deleted numerous business-critical files used by his team. Adding insult to injury, restoring users’ lost files on the old shared “Marketing Drive” folder required each individual to go through a convoluted recovery process. Due to the design of Google Drive’s file permission architecture, the company’s IT department could not perform an in-place recovery so that the files and folders were restored to their original locations.

In Office 365, this team would’ve used a SharePoint portal site for their structured file storage—which has cloud-based, enterprise-grade redundancy to protect against file removal. And in the event that the employee’s personal account’s OneDrive For Business was used for team file storage, Microsoft offers a superior in-place file recovery solution with Files Restore. Unlike the limited restore features in Google Drive, the Microsoft Files Restore solution is self-service recovery for files compromised due to accidental deletion, file corruption, or malware infection.

Office 365 works perfectly well on Mac and iOS devices

Companies with investments in Apple hardware such as MacBooks, iPads, and iPhones often claim that Google G Suite apps work better on the Apple platform than Office 365 apps for macOS and iOS. However, starting in 2017 there were steady feature updates to the Mac and iOS versions of Office 365 from Microsoft to enhance how teams create content on the platform. For example, the latest updates from Microsoft to the Office 365 apps for Mac and iOS enabled online document co-authoring, autosaving for files stored in OneDrive and SharePoint, improved search in Outlook, and the ability to drag-and-drop content or files in the native iOS apps for Office 365.

While these features were already available for Office 365 users on Windows PCs and (ironically) Google Android mobile devices, they were all features that Mac and iOS users requested or required before looking at switching from G Suite. The Mac user holdouts have lost their key excuses not to switch.

Companies with 500 users or more of Google Drive can move their operations into OneDrive For Business for free through June 30, 2018. As a certified Gold Microsoft Partner for Office 365, Amaxra experts will evaluate what it takes to switch from Google G Suite.

Limited time offer:Let Amaxra manage your Office 365 licensing and we will configure security such as multi-factor authentication at no additional cost. Emailtechnology@amaxra.comor chat with us on this website to find out more.

G Suite FAQ

How is G Suite Drive different?

In Drive, content may exist in multiple locations based on how each user prefers to organize their files. This sharing paradigm in G Suite Drive differs from most other providers.

When a folder is shared to another user, it appears in their Shared with Me section. From there, it can be added to the user's My Drive, and then placed in any folder of their choosing, including other shared folders.

G Suite Shared Drives

For easy access, our app displays Shared Drives (previously Team Drives) in the root of your connector (among the users).

If you're editing the source or destination paths in our app, simply select the back button to find the root listing of users and Shared Drives, and select the source/destination that you would like.

If you're creating a user mapping via CSV, you would map your Accounting Shared Drive as /Accounting, which is different than your Accounting user /accounting@company.com.

G Suite Shared Drives permissions

Our app is not able to read or write permissions to Google Shared Drives. Shared Drives do not allow explicit folder level permissions. Rather, Shared Drive permissions are set based on the Shared Drive members.

Important

The Shared Drive must have at least one member with either the Writer or Organizer role in it for Mover to scan or transfer content out of the Shared Drive. If no members have the Writer or Organizer role, the scan or transfer will fail with errors stating we cannot access the Shared Drive.

What's the difference between file versions and revision history?

Revision history for Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides is different than file versions in Google Drive. Revision history refers to the ability to see earlier versions of a file, and view who made specific edits to the document. During the migration, revision history is not transferred. Only the most recent version of a file is transferred.

What isn't transferred

What happens to Google Drawings, Forms, Sites, and Maps?

Google does not allow us to export Drawings, Forms, Sites, and Maps from Drive. These are not transferred.

What about Docs, Slides, and Sheets?

Google's proprietary formats are not compatible with anything other than G Suite Drive. When migrating from G Suite, our app converts to the Microsoft Office format from Google's format.

Note

The only way to migrate/download a Google format file is to request that they [Google] convert it. Mover does not control the conversion process, and the forced limitations are strictly on Google's end.

Files marked as restricted

G Suite Drive enables owners to disable the ability for users to copy, download, or print a file on a per-file basis. This feature must be disabled on each file for which it has been enabled, in order for a migration to function properly, or you receive an error stating:

Permissions issue: File marked as restricted or not copyable

To disable this feature, see the Sharing settings for a file, and select Advanced. Check the checkbox for the owner of the file to Disable options to download, print, and copy for commenters and viewers.

What happens to Google Drive shortcuts?

Shortcut files are not supported for migration. These shortcut files will not be transferred.

Multi-parenting behavior in G Suite Drive

Permissions and ownership of data in a G Suite Drive source can be complicated. To retain a similar directory structure and sharing scheme in the destination, our app must make some decisions on who owns what and where that data is best located.

G Suite Drive allows files and folders to exist in different places for different users.

When a folder is shared out to another user, it appears in their /Shared with me section. From there, it can be added to the user's /My Drive and then placed in any folder of their choosing, including their own folders, or other shared folders.

Office 365 does not support this same nesting of shared data, which is why we've developed a solution.

Examples

See the following two examples for how users might create conflicting folder structures.

Example 1:

Office 365 Google Drive Plugin

1. Mark shares a folder with Eric.
2. Eric views Shared with me, and selects Add to My Drive on this new shared folder.
3. In My Drive, Eric drags this new folder to a different folder.
4. There are now two conflicting subfolders that our app must make a decision on.

Example 2:Any file or folder in a user's My Drive may be arbitrarily added to a new location. These files or folders will be viewable in multiple places. The correct location is now unclear.

The solution

Layperson's terms:

For Google Drive, for each user, starting at their root My Drive, we descend into all root folders they own, and then all sub folders regardless of ownership. We transfer content to them while sharing out editors and viewer permissions on any folders, as required. We only stop descending when we find a folder that has already been copied by another user who transferred earlier, including potentially folders at the root My Drive level.

A user story:

Any folders I own in my My Drive I will own in OneDrive. I will also own the contents of these folders, whether I technically owned the contents before or not. This is true unless my coworker transfers before me and they become the owner, in which case I will find that folder in my Shared > Shared With Me section of OneDrive.

In order to ensure your users still have access to all their important files, our app automatically makes a decision on which user owns a folder when multiple users have conflicting views.

We automatically resolve conflicts between ownership. This will happen on either a scan or a transfer, whichever you perform first.

Users may be scanned in any order. To prioritize conflict resolution please scan users in preferred priority order. Typically customers scan their department heads so they are assigned any ownership conflicts. After that, scanning the rest of your users in any order is statistically just fine.

We recommend you always scan first. Once a folder has been assigned, this may not be undone.

The Google folder assignment process is fairly complicated; however, here are some basic rules:

1. The first folder assignment wins ownership. Anyone after that receives editor status in order to maintain access.
2. If we determine User A/My Drive/subfolder as a permanent location for User A, our app copies the entire subfolder and all of its contents to User A, therefore giving User A ownership of the entire subfolder. We then share User A/My Drive/subfolder with any collaborators.
3. A folder can be 'orphaned' by not existing in a My Drive. It can also be orphaned if it exists in a My Drive at the root, but is not owned by that user, and it doesn't exist in anyone else's My Drive including the Owner. Orphaned items are very rare, and they will not be migrated!

Authorizing G Suite Drive (Administrator)

To authorize or add a G Suite Drive account as a Connector, follow these simple steps:

Important

You must be a G Suite Administrator with the ability to manage third party applications.

1. From your Google Apps dashboard, select our app's grid logo, and then select Admin.

2. Select Apps, and then select Marketplace Apps.

3. Near the top right, to add a new app, select +, and search for Mover.

   Important

   When our app opens in a new tab/window, to verify that you are viewing the Marketplace using your admin Google account, at the top right, select the account icon.

4. Select Domain Install, and then select Continue.

5. Select the checkbox stating you agree to the Terms of Use, and then select Accept.

6. Select Next. To close the overlay window, select Done.You should see our app installed amongst any other third-party apps you have. If it does not appear, simply refresh the page.

   We now have access to your users and their data, so we can move on to Connector authorization.

7. After install, select our app, and ensure that you grant Data Access. This is an extra security step required by G Suite.

8. In the Transfer Wizard, select Authorize New Connector.

9. In the Connector list, find G Suite (Administrator).

10. Select Authorize.

11. A new window (tab) opens. Name your Connector .

12. Select Authorize again.

13. If you are not logged in, to sign in, use your Google credentials.

14. To grant our app access to your G Suite (Administrator) Account, select Allow.

Office 365 Google Drive Download

Troubleshooting a G Suite (Administrator) connector

App permissions

For us to be able to view and transfer data to and from G Suite Drive, you must have our app installed as per the instructions in Connector Creation. In some cases, you may have our app installed, but disabled. If you are having problems connecting, you should ensure our marketplace app is enabled for all users. To access your third-party app settings in Google Apps, follow the same steps.

Google Drive permission requirements

Our app requires a Global Admin for authorization. The following table provides a detailed list of the scopes we require.

Connect your source G Suite Drive account

If you are not already connected after you have authorized your source, click G Suite Drive and load the connector. An icon will appear and show you how many users you are migrating.