1. BitTitan Help Center
  2. Perform a Migration
  3. Google Workspace Migrations
  4. Google Drive and Google Shared Drive Document Migrations

Google Drive to Dropbox Migration Guide

This article will guide you through the steps for migrating folders and documents from Google Drive to Dropbox.

First time?

This migration guide contains the necessary steps to perform the actual migration, but there are many steps to preparing for migration. If this is your first time performing a migration, we have created a Migration Planning & Strategy Guide to walk you through planning, set-up, and general migration best practices. If you have never performed a migration before, we suggest reading that before beginning the steps outlined in this scenario.

Some item types are not migrated. Click the bar below to expand the full list of what item types are and are not migrated. We are constantly working to create a better migration experience for you, so these items may change.

Items and folders in "Shared with Me" will not be migrated. Only items in "My Drive" will be migrated. To migrate "Shared with Me" items, they must be added to "My Drive".

We are not able to support the use of Admin accounts that use two-factor or multifactor authentication. 

The maximum file size for migration through MigrationWiz varies by migration type and environment, but may never exceed 60GB.

What items are and are not migrated?
Migrated
  • Folders
  • Folders you have shared
  • Permissions
  • G Suite native files
  • Code Files
  • Documents
  • Images
  • Executables
  • Videos
  • Audio Files
  • Templates (files that the template had been applied to are migrated)
  • Creation Date (Creation date gets changed to the "date of migration" date)
  • Scripts/Macros (Scripts are not converted to macros when going to documents)
  • Document History
  • Comments
  • File/Folder permissions
  • Items/folders in "Shared with Me”. These folders must be added to the user’s “My Drive” and FullCopy Mode must be used in order to migrate these items/folders.
Not Migrated

Google Shared Drives (also known as Team Drives) are not supported. This is largely because Shared Drives use a different root folder than Google Drive does. Shared Drives also follow different organization, sharing, and ownership models, so the same methods used to migrate Google Drive will not work to migrate Shared Drives.

Personal / Free Google Drive is not supported

File/folder shortcuts

MigrationWiz is a migration tool, not a syncing tool. If changes are made at the source after migration, they will not sync to the destination, nor will changes made at the destination sync to the source. We do not have “live” monitoring of changes (as with a sync agent) and we cannot handle scenarios such as conflict resolution without user interaction.

Prepare the Source

The Google Drive (Own Service Account) connector launched in 2020 and requires the set up of a Google Service account. This significantly reduces the likelihood of the migration being throttled. This is the option we recommend for all Google Drive migrations. Follow the steps below under under OAuth2 Requirements for Google Drive (Own Service Account) to set up your environment for this endpoint.

All accounts being migrated must be in Active status in the tenant. Users that are set to a status of Inactive will not be able to fully migrate and will fail in the project.

OAuth2 Requirements for Google Drive (Own Service Account)

Prerequisites

  • Subscription to Google Cloud Platform.
  • Google Super Administrator account.
  • Ability to set up a service account on the G Suite tenant.
  • A Google service account must be set up before the MigrationWiz project is created.

Create a Google Project

  1. Go to the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Console and sign in as a super administrator. Choose one of the options below:
    • If you haven't used the Google Cloud Platform Console before, agree to the Terms of Service and click Create Project.
    • If you have used Google Cloud Platform Console before, at the top of the screen next to your most recent project name, click Down to open your projects list. Then, click New Project.
  2. Enter a project name and click Create.
  3. When the new project creation completes, at the top of the screen next to the current project name, click Down icon and select the newly created project name from the list.

If you are not able to create a project here, it may be that the ability to create projects has been disabled for your tenant. To check this, navigate to the Google Admin Center and click on Apps > Additional Google Services and select the Google Cloud Platform. Once there, you should see a setting that can be toggled in order to allow users to create projects.

Enable APIs for Service Account

  1. From the Google Cloud Platform Console, click Menu > APIs & Services > Library.
  2. Enable the following APIs by selecting the specific API and clicking Enable.
    Repeat for each API listed below:
    • Google Drive API
    • Admin SDK

Make sure that the respective services are enabled within the Google tenant. You can control services for your users using the instructions on this page: Control who can access G Suite and Google Services.

Create Customer Tenant Service Account

  1. From the Google Cloud Platform Console, click Menu > IAM & Admin > Service accounts.
  2. Click + Create Service Account at the top middle of the screen and enter a name.
  3. Click Create.
  4. Assign the role of Owner to the new Service Account by selecting Owner from the Role drop down menu.
  5. Click Continue to move to the next step, then click the Done 
  6. You will now be returned to the "Service Accounts" page. 
  7. On ‘Service accounts' page, click vertical ellipsis under 'Actions’ column for the service account created above.
  8. Click Create key.
    1. Make sure that JSON is selected as "Key Type."
  9. Click Create.
  10. Click Close.

Download the key as a JSON file and make a note of the name and location of the file. This JSON file will be used when setting up the migration endpoint in the migration project.

NOTE

The JSON file must contain information in the following fields: “type”, “private key”, and “client email”. If these mandatory fields are empty the file upload during endpoint creation will fail.

Setting the Scopes for the Migration

  1. From the Google Cloud Platform Console:

      1. Click Menu.
      2. Click IAM & Admin.
      3. Click Service Accounts.
      4. Find the service account that was set up in Step 3: Create Customer Tenant Account.
      5. Find and copy the service accounts Unique ID number. This is the Client ID number that will be used in a later step.
        • This field often needs to be added to the view. Click on the Column display options button and add a checkmark to Unique ID, then click OK.
        • This Client ID should be considered similar to Administrator account passwords and handled securely.
      6. You will now have one of two options, depending on if the Google UI has been updated in your tenant.

      Old Google Tenant UI:

      1. Go to the G Suite admin page at google.com.
      2. Click Security.
      3. Click Advanced Settings.
      4. Click Manage API Client Access.

      OR If your account shows the latest UI updates from Google, as shown below:New_Google_Admin_APP_Access_Control.JPG

      1. Go to the G Suite admin page at google.com.
      2. Click Security.
      3. Click Advanced Settings.
      4. Under ‘Domain-wide delegation’, click Manage domain-wide delegation.
      5. On the Manage domain-wide delegation page, click Add new.

 Once these steps are complete:

  1. In the Client ID field, paste the Unique ID copied above.
  2. In the OAuth scopes (comma-delimited) field, paste all scopes listed below:
  3. For source endpoint:
    https://www.googleapis.com/auth/admin.directory.group.readonly, https://www.googleapis.com/auth/admin.directory.user.readonly, https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.readonly
  4. Click Authorize.

 You should now see your specific Unique ID and the associate scopes listed.

Export mailboxes to CSV file(s)

From the Google Admin portal:

  1. Click Users
  2. Click ⁝ (3 vertical dots) 
  3. Download Users
  4. Download All Users
  5. Click OK 
  6. Save

Prepare the Destination Environment

  1. Create the Dropbox Business account and purchase Dropbox licenses.
  2. Create a Dropbox user account that will be used for the migration, and grant this account appropriate team admin privileges. Follow the instructions in the Add Tiered Admins guide from Dropbox.
  3. Use the list created under Step 3 of the Prepare the Source Environment section of this guide to recreate users in the new Dropbox Business account. Follow the instructions in the Invite your Team guide from Dropbox. Users must accept the invitations before their accounts are created at Dropbox. You must wait for the team to accept the invitations before starting the migration, or the migration will fail.

Set up MigrationWiz 

The following steps will guide you through setting up your migration project in MigrationWiz. For all endpoints in this process, select or create the Google Drive (Own Service Account) endpoint.

Create New Project

To create a new migration project:

    1. Click the Go To My Projects button.
    2. Click the Create Project button.
    3. Under Project Type, select Document Project. Document projects are used to migrate document drives from one cloud storage to another. Document migrations will maintain the folder hierarchy from the source to the destination.
    4. Enter a Project name and select a Customer. If you have not already added the customer into MSPComplete, you will need to click New to create the Customer.
    5. Click Next Step.
    6. Select the JSON file created in the steps above and enter the Super Admin username and password for the source then select the source endpoint from the Endpoint dropdown list, or create a new source Google Drive (Own Service Account) endpoint.
    7. Click Next Step.
    8. Select the destination Dropbox endpoint from the Endpoint dropdown list, or create a new Dropbox endpoint.
    9. Click Save and Go to Summary.
    10. On the Authorization page, click the Request Access Token button to open the Dropbox authorization page.
    11. Enter the email address and password for the Dropbox admin account and click the Sign In button. This generates the access token required by MigrationWiz for the MigrationWiz project and redirects back to the Authorization page of the MigrationWiz project.
    12. Click the Save Project button.

Add Items

Add the accounts (also referred to as "items") that will be migrated to the project. There are several ways to do this. 

Quick Add
This option allows you to add items one at a time. You have to enter an email address, login name, and password for each user if you didn't enter administrative credentials when setting up the project. You only have to provide an email address if you entered administrative credentials when setting up the project.
Bulk Add

MigrationWiz allows you to bulk import mailboxes into the system.

To import one or more mailboxes:

  1. Sign in to your MigrationWiz account.
  2. Select the Project for which you want to perform the bulk import.
  3. Click Add.
  4. Click Bulk Add.
  5. Follow the instructions on the page.
Autodiscover

The Autodiscover process within MigrationWiz can be used to discover items from the Source environment, so that they can be imported into your projects.

There are few requirements in order for this to work:

  • The Source has to be Exchange 2007 or later, or Office 365, or G Suite. If you are using Autodiscover from G Suite, all G Suite domains must be added to the list of domains in the Endpoint.
  • The endpoint on the Source needs to use admin credentials.
  • The endpoint Administrator account on the source needs to be assigned the appropriate GSuite license in order for MigrationWiz to access Google Drive or Google Shared Drives for the Auto Discovery process.
  • For mailbox migration projects, the admin account that is specified within the Source endpoint needs to have a mailbox associated with it.
  • The admin mailbox must be listed in the public Global Address List (GAL).
  • The migration project type needs to be a Mailbox migration. For the exact steps to be followed during your migration, refer to the relevant Migration Guide. All Migration Guides can be found on the Help Center site.

One additional item to note here is that there is not a way to restrict the IP addresses that the connection will come from.  This means that the steps outlined in our IP Lockdown guide will not apply here.  If your environment requires that any IP addresses be whitelisted, it is recommended that items be added to your project using on of the other available options.

Autodiscover of items will not work while using Modern Authentication

Autodiscovery exposes the following items:

  • For mailbox migration, autodiscovery will list all mailboxes at the Source.

Steps to Run Autodiscover

  1. Navigate to the project you want to import users into.

  2. Ensure that you have created an endpoint for the source project.

  3. Once in the project, on the top navigation bar, click on the Add drop-down, then select Autodiscover Items. This will begin the Autodiscover process.

  4. Once discovered, click on the Import button, to import the items into your MigrationWiz project.

Set Advanced Options

Set the Project Advanced Options. These are customization options which help MigrationWiz perform within specific environments. 

Under Support/Support Options add:

  • InitializationTimeout=8 - This increases the initialization timeout window to eight hours. 
  • RemoveExistingPermissionsWhenUnspecified=1 There are no spaces on either side of the "=" sign, and the entries are case-sensitive, so pay special attention to the capital letters in the commands above.

  • DocumentBrowsingMode=FullCopy - This option migrates items regardless of the owner of the folder. For more details, see the Google Drive Migrations FAQ article.

Set the Advanced Option to send a notification to end users after the migration pass completes:

  1. Select Notifications.
  2. Send successful migration and notification to:
    1. Source email address (if users are still using G Suite Gmail)
    2. Destination email address (if users are already using Office 365).
  3. Customize notification email:
    1. Checkmark the Customize "successful migration" email box.
    2. Add your own customization text and company name to this email.

Notifications are not mandatory for a successful migration. Notifications should only be set up before the final pass. If performing a single, Full pass, set this up now. If you are following a Pre-Stage migration strategy, only set this up prior to the final Full (Delta) pass.

Run Verify Credentials

You may verify the credentials of items in MigrationWiz without migrating data or consuming any licenses.

  1. Open the Project containing items you wish to validate​.
  2. Select the items you wish to validate.
  3. Click the Start button in your dashboard.
  4. Select Verify Credentials from the drop-down list.

Once complete, the results of the verification will be shown in the Status section.​ 

Notify Users

Notify users that a migration is occurring. Send an email to all users telling them the time and date of the migration. During this time, they should not modify any documents in their Google Drive accounts, because any modifications will not be included in the migration.

Run Migration

Perform the migration, using one of the following strategies. More information on each strategy is included in the Migration Planning and Strategy Guide linked in the beginning of this guide. 

  • Full Migration strategy. For small migration projects that are less than 50 users, we recommend a Full Migration strategy. This is a single, full-pass migration, and requires licenses. This migration selection will migrate all identified and supported items.  
  • Pre-Stage Migration Strategy: This strategy includes a Pre-Stage pass and a Full (Delta) pass. This migration selection will migrate all identified and supported items before the selected date. This migration option requires a license of the appropriate type.

For large migration projects that are more than 50 users, we recommend a Pre-Stage Migration strategy. This is a multiple-pass migration.

Important: Recent changes to the Dropbox APIs prevent us from adding watermarks on files in the Destination Dropbox accounts. Therefore, if you perform a partial migration, reset the items in MigrationWiz, and then perform the migration again, you will end up with duplicate files at the Destination. If you must rerun the migration, we recommend that you first delete all files already migrated to the destination Dropbox accounts.

Once you have chosen your migration strategy: 

  1. Click on the name of the Project you want to run.
  2. Select one or more items to migrate by checking the box next to the item name. If you want to select all the items, click the checkbox to the left of Source Email.
  3. Click the Start button and select the type of migration to run.
  4. If you want to delay your migration, then select the checkbox marked "Automatically start the migration at", and enter the date and time to have the migration start. To start a migration immediately, you do not need to select the scheduling option.
  5. Click Start Migration.

Request Statistics

Click the pie chart icon in the MigrationWiz dashboard to receive an email containing all the project migration statistics. 

Post-Migration Steps

  1. To prevent users from inadvertently logging in and using their Google Drive accounts, decommission the Google Drive user accounts, or change their passwords.
  2. Notify users once the migration has completed. If you set the MigrationWiz Advanced Option for Notifications, they will receive an email upon completion of the migration. Assist them with setting up access to their Dropbox accounts.
  3. Provide training to end users on Dropbox.
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