How to View a Shared Drive’s Trash and Restore Items or Empty It

Quick and easy-to-follow guide for Google Drive users

What happens when someone deletes items in a shared drive

How to view a shared drive’s Trash and restore or delete items step-by-step with images

Step 1

How To View A Shared Drive's Trash in Google Drive And Restore Items Or Empty It - Step 1

Go to Google Drive at https://drive.google.com and click Shared drives on the left.

Right-click a shared drive and select View trash.

Step 2

How To View A Shared Drive's Trash in Google Drive And Restore Items Or Empty It - Step 2

Alternatively, select Trash on the left, click My Drive on top, and select a shared drive.

Step 3

How To View A Shared Drive's Trash in Google Drive And Restore Items Or Empty It - Step 3

Right-click a file or folder and select Restore to bring it back to the shared drive. 

Click Delete forever to remove items from the shared drive altogether. If you do this, you can’t restore the items anymore, but a Google Workspace admin can restore them in the next 25 days.

In shared drives, there’s no Empty trash button that lets you remove everything from Trash. Instead, you have to select multiple items at a time and delete them.

Check the steps below if you don’t know how to select multiple items simultaneously.

Step 4

How To View A Shared Drive's Trash in Google Drive And Restore Items Or Empty It - Step 4

You can select and restore or delete multiple items simultaneously:

  1. Left-click and hold down the mouse button over empty space.
  2. Drag your cursor to form a rectangle over the items.
  3. Release the left mouse button, selecting all items below the rectangle, indicated by the blue highlight.
  4. Right-click and choose Restore or Delete forever.
How To View A Shared Drive's Trash in Google Drive And Restore Items Or Empty It - Step 5

Alternatively, you can do this:

  1. Left-click to select the first item.
  2. Hold down the SHIFT key.
  3. Left-click to select the last item.
  4. Items in-between are selected as well, indicated by the blue highlight.
  5. Right-click and choose Restore or Delete forever.

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