Uploading to Drive

You can add files to Drive in three ways. You need permission to upload in Drive. If you don't have it, the New button is unavailable.

Upload files

  1. Open the folder you want the files to go into.
  2. Click New and choose File upload. The menu shows which folder the files will go Into.
  3. Select one or more files.

You can also drag files from your desktop onto the Drive page, onto a folder row, or onto a folder in the left folder tree.

Upload a whole folder

  1. Open the folder you want to upload into.
  2. Click New and choose Folder upload.
  3. Pick the folder on your computer.

You can also drag a folder from your desktop into Drive. Drive recreates the folder's sub-folders, including empty ones. Each file goes into the matching sub-folder.

  • Common system files are skipped: .DS_Store, Thumbs.db and desktop.ini.
  • A single folder upload can create at most 500 folders. It can be nested at most 20 levels deep. If you go over the folder limit, the upload is refused before anything is created.
  • Folder and file names are tidied automatically. Slashes and control characters become spaces, extra spaces are collapsed, and trailing dots and spaces are removed. A folder whose name is only dots or spaces is created as "Untitled folder".

Upload progress

Uploads run in a queue, three files at a time. Each file shows its own progress. You can cancel a file or retry one that failed. The queue keeps going if you move to another folder.

What happens if the name already exists?

Drive never overwrites an existing file or folder on upload. It adds a number to the new item's name instead.

  • Files: if Report.pdf already exists in the folder, the new file is named Report (2).pdf. A third would be Report (3).pdf. The number goes before the extension.
  • Folders: if you create a folder called "Lookbook" and one already exists, the new one is named "Lookbook (2)".
  • Folder uploads: the top-level folder you upload follows the same rule. If "Lookbook" already exists, the uploaded one becomes "Lookbook (2)", and all of its contents go into that new folder. Nothing is merged into the existing folder.
  • Name matching ignores upper and lower case, so report.pdf and Report.pdf count as the same name.
  • If two files with the same name are uploaded at nearly the same time, the second one to finish gets the next free number.

Limits and files Drive won't accept

  • Each file can be at most 500 MB.
  • Empty files are rejected.
  • These file types can't be stored: exe, bat, cmd, com, msi, dll, scr, ps1, vbs, jar, sh, js, mjs, html, htm, xhtml, svg, svgz, php, phtml, hta, app, dmg and pkg. A rejected file shows the message ".ext files can't be stored in Drive." Other files in the same upload are not affected.
  • A single name can be at most 200 characters.