How to Transfer Google Drive to OneDrive?

1. Introduction

Transferring Google Drive to OneDrive involves moving your organization’s files and folders along with sharing permissions, timestamps, embedded links, and other types of metadata.

In many cases, Google Drive to OneDrive migration is part of a broader Google Workspace to Microsoft 365 migration, driven by uses cases such as cloud standardization, mergers and acquisitions, cost optimization, and more.

This guide walks through all the process of migrating from Google Drive to OneDrive, including planning and preparation, actual migration steps, and post-migration activities.

You can also watch our migration videos to get started:

2. Google Drive to OneDrive Migration Planning and Preparation

Migration planning and preparation are the first two fundamental areas to focus on. Lack of proper plan and preparedness raises the risks of stumbling upon roadblocks when the migration is already in progress.

1) Run a Pre-Migration Audit for Migration Scoping

To be able to plan your Google Drive to OneDrive migration properly, it is important to first run a pre-migration audit of your source cloud environment (Google Drive) and have a clear understanding of:

• The total number of users
• Total data size
• Sharing permissions complexity
• Overall collaboration structure
• Hyperlinking structure
• External collaborators

Based on the insights you get from the pre-migration audit, plan the scope of migration accordingly.

2) Choose a Google Drive to OneDrive Migration Tool

The migration tool you choose largely determines the outcome. Therefore, it is important to choose a proven Google Drive to OneDrive migration tool like CloudFuze Migrate. During the discovery phase, test all the migration capabilities of the tool while also checking its security and compliance posture.

As mentioned in many Reddit discussion threads, it is best to go with migration vendors that are also Microsoft Partners for end-to-end migration support, security, and compliance

3) Create User Mapping and Batches

The user mapping paths you create determine the accuracy of the migration. There are two standard ways to migrate source and destination cloud users, that is, automapping method and the CSV method.

Auto-mapping works for simple user mapping paths where source and destination users have the exact email addresses while the CSV method is best for creating custom user mapping paths.

4) Prepare Your Microsoft 365 Environment

Destination environment preparation is often overlooked, but it is one of the most important aspects of the migration. Before you transfer your Google Drive users and data to OneDrive, make sure to provision users in OneDrive. This way their accounts become active, and storage is assigned to them.

5) Be Prepared with Admin Login Details

It is important to authenticate Google Drive and OneDrive to be able to migrate users and data from them using tools like CloudFuze Migrate. Therefore, ensure that your team is ready with Super Admin login details for Google Drive (Google Workspace) and Global Admin login details for OneDrive (Microsoft 365).

6) Communicate About the Transition

One of the best ways to prepare users for the change of platforms is to communicate with them about the transition. Set realistic expectations and provide prior training to help them adopt OneDrive and the overall Microsoft 365 suite smoothly. Equally important is to establish a stakeholder communication plan.

3. Steps To Transfer Google Drive to OneDrive

Migrate Google Drive to OneDrive with the detailed steps and screenshots listed below. You can also follow them for migrating Shared Drives to OneDrive.

Step 1: Log into CloudFuze

Out of all the steps, accessing the migration tool is the first and the most important step to move Google Drive data to OneDrive at a high volume. Create an account and log into CloudFuze to add your Google Drive and OneDrive accounts to migrate data.

Step 2: Add Google Drive to CloudFuze

Add your company’s Google Drive (Google Workspace/G Suite) account by clicking on the G Suite logo. The G Suite cloud is located in the business clouds section.

Step 3: Enter G Suite Admin Login Credentials

Now, enter the admin login credentials of your company’s Google Workspace account.

Step 4: Grant Access to CloudFuze

CloudFuze requires access to your Google Workspace account for moving Google Drive to OneDrive.

Please keep in mind that the access is granted via OAuth 2.0 and your data is completely safe. CloudFuze only uses API calls to transfer files from Google Drive to OneDrive.

Step 5: Add OneDrive for Business Account

The next step is adding OneDrive. You need to click on the OneDrive for Business logo in the business clouds list and enter your company’s Microsoft 365 admin login credentials.

Step 6: Enter Microsoft 365 Login Credentials

Enter your company’s Microsoft 365 admin login details. Please keep in mind that it is not possible to move from Google Drive to OneDrive without admin credentials.

Step 7: Complete OneDrive Authorization Process

Click on the Accept button to complete adding your company’s OneDrive to CloudFuze.

Step 8: Check Whether Clouds Are Added

Go to Clouds -> Manage Clouds and check whether Google Drive and OneDrive accounts are added. If you find a cloud missing, you need to add the cloud once again.

It is only by properly adding both clouds that it becomes possible to transfer Google Drive files to OneDrive.

Step 9: Click on Team Migration

To copy Google Drive files to Office 365 (OneDrive), click on the Team Migration icon and follow the next steps.

Step 10: Select Source and Destination Cloud Accounts

Since you are trying to migrate Google Drive to OneDrive and not the other way round, select Google Drive as the source account and OneDrive as the destination account.

Step 11: Map User Accounts and Prepare Them for Migration

CloudFuze has a feature called Auto-map that automatically maps user accounts and their data to transfer from Google Drive to OneDrive. It saves a lot of time and prevents the need to manually map user accounts.

You can select all the users in your Google Drive account or go with a few if you want to migrate users in batches.

You can request a demo or a POC to our business migration team to learn how to move from Google Drive to OneDrive with the auto-mapping feature.

Step 12: Select Users to Migrate

As a part of the demo, we have shown below how to move data from Google Drive to OneDrive of just a single user.

Step 13: A Final Few Migration Options

You can give the migration job a name and select migration time. Besides, you can add email IDs of coworkers who need to get migration updates.

Step 14: Start the Process to Migrate Data from Google Drive to OneDrive

Check everything and click on the Start Migration button. This will start the actual process to move Google Drive to OneDrive.

Step 15: Google Drive to OneDrive Migration is in Progress

CloudFuze displays the status as ‘In Progress’ during the data migration. At this point, you can pause and resume the migration. You can even cancel the migration altogether.

Please keep in mind that CloudFuze will not delete any file in your Google Drive account if you decide to cancel the migration. However, files that were already migrated to OneDrive will remain there until you delete them manually.

Step 16: The Migration Is Completed

CloudFuze displays the status as ‘Processed’ once all the files in your Google Drive account are migrated to OneDrive. You and your team can log into OneDrive accounts and validate the data.

4. Post-Migration Checklist

After completing the one-time migration, it’s important to follow several important post-migration best practices to close off the project in a proper way.

• Validate the migrated user batches using migration reports.
• Reintegrate all the third-party apps or their alternatives from Microsoft Marketplace.
• Once everything looks good, perform a cutover.
• Decommission Google Drive and the entire Google Workspace suite if needed.

5. Why Migrate from Google Drive to OneDrive?

Organizations move their users and data from Google Drive to OneDrive for various reasons and use cases, including:

1) Cloud Suite Standardization

Many companies run both Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 platforms today, usually because different departments adopted different tools over time. Eventually, running two productivity suites in parallel becomes expensive and hard to govern.

And when consolidating, Microsoft 365 becomes the standard if the company is already invested in Azure, Microsoft Teams, etc.

2) Mergers and Acquisitions

When two companies merge and one runs Google Workspace while the other runs Microsoft 365, IT leadership typically standardizes on a single platform to simplify licensing, security policy, and support.

3) AI Tooling Decisions

With Copilot and Gemini both maturing quickly, some organizations are migrating to align their file storage with whichever AI assistance their teams have standardized on. This is because both tools work best when your organization’s documents live natively inside their respective ecosystem.

And now with migration providers like CloudFuze supporting AI app migration, including Gemini to Copilot migration and vice versa, AI tooling decisions are becoming a high priority in broader cloud migration plans.

4) Compliance and Security Requirements

Organizations in regulated industries, such as finance, healthcare, and government increasingly need the depth of Microsoft’s compliance tooling, including Defender for Office 365, Purview, and tighter access policies through Entra ID.

Some industry comparisons put Microsoft 365 ahead in the majority of enterprise security and compliance categories, which is a common trigger for switching.

6. Google Drive vs. OneDrive: What Changes When You Migrate?

Google Drive and OneDrive both offer solid cloud storage, file sharing, and sync capabilities so on paper they look similar. The real differences show up in how each platform handles collaboration, formation structure, and where clients ultimately live inside a company’s broader ecosystem.

The two platforms currently sit close in an overall market share globally, but enterprise adoption tells a different story. Microsoft 365 leads in large enterprise and Fortune 500 environments, largely because of tighter integration with Windows-based IT stacks, compliance tooling, and identity management through Entra ID.

That’s the pattern behind most of the Google Drive to OneDrive migrations we see at CloudFuze. We frequently see companies standardizing on Microsoft 365 across the business, often after a merger or an acquisition, a security and compliance push, or a broader move to consolidate IT tools under one vendor.

7. How CloudFuze Migrates Permissions From Google Drive to OneDrive

CloudFuze bridges the differences in user roles in Google Drive and OneDrive by migrating permissions from Google Drive to the correct user roles in OneDrive.

Companies planning to switch from Google Drive to OneDrive can have their Google Drive permissions migrated in the following way by CloudFuze:

8. Challenges of Migrating Google Drive to OneDrive

Google Drive and OneDrive for Business share a lot of similarities, but at the same time, they have differences in between them as well. One of the noticeable differences is character and file/folder names support.

Microsoft 365 does not support specific special characters in OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online.

Microsoft 365 also does not support specific file and folder names in OneDrive for Business:

With a migration tool like CloudFuze Migrate, you can transfer Google Drive to OneDrive and have files and folders automatically renamed to versions that OneDrive for Business supports.

Other technical challenges for businesses to migrate files from Google Drive to OneDrive include:

• File path limitation of 400 characters in OneDrive
• Converting formats of Google Drive files to Microsoft-supported formats
• Migrating embedded links
• Updating new changes on the files and folders migrated to OneDrive
• API throttling set either by Google or Microsoft

With CloudFuze Migrate, your organization can tackle these challenges, seamlessly switch to OneDrive from Google Drive, and adopt Microsoft 365 smoothly.

9. CloudFuze’s Solution for Transferring Files from Google Drive to OneDrive

CloudFuze helps businesses of all sizes move files from Google Drive to OneDrive (and between other clouds) securely (with hosting options) while adhering to project deadline.

Our migration team works with enterprises, SMBs, and MSPs to run successful cloud data migrations using a managed migration model.

Managed migration (white glove service) is significantly less work for internal IT teams than a DIY approach, because CloudFuze migration team handles the project from planning through validation.

With our managed migration service, businesses of all sizes can get actionable insights and learn how to migrate files from Google Drive to OneDrive despite various complexities, such as intricate folder structures, multiple file versions, and complex permissions sharing.

10. Google Drive to OneDrive Migration Features

CloudFuze not only transfers files from Google Drive to OneDrive but also migrates users, sharing permissions, folder structure, and many other Google Drive features.

With our solution, businesses planning to copy files from Google Drive to OneDrive get these competitive advantages:

1. Fast data transfer performance
2. Automatic user mapping/CSV and manual mapping
3. Auto-retry mechanism to mitigate throttling errors
4. Smart features to handle OneDrive filename errors
5. LDAP/AD integration
6. Availability of a dedicated account manager and migration team
7. Available as a SaaS platform or can be installed in your own cloud or data center
8. One-off license as opposed to a monthly subscription
9. ITSP/MSP licenses
10. Migration project planning and execution support

11. CloudFuze vs. Competitor Migration Tools

CloudFuze helps businesses copy data from Google Drive to OneDrive along with all the features. The extensive support for features migration positions CloudFuze as a market leader in this GDrive to OneDrive migration space.

Here is the comparison of CloudFuze’s migration capabilities against other tools in the market:

With our industry-leading tool functionalities, you can equip your organization with the most advanced technology to strategically and securely make the switch to OneDrive from Google Drive.

Migrate from Google Drive to OneDrive Successfully with CloudFuze

If you are planning to move your organization’s Google Drive users and data to OneDrive, we can help you get there successfully. We’d be happy to offer you a free migration assessment. Contact us today.

12. Google Drive to OneDrive Transfer FAQ

1. How to copy files from Google Drive to OneDrive without a Microsoft support error?

CloudFuze converts Google files/documents such as Google Docs, Google Slides, and Google Sheets to respective Microsoft files, including Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Microsoft Excel. CloudFuze does this while retaining all the comments, timestamps, version history, and sharing permissions.

2. How To Move Documents from Google Drive to OneDrive in a High Volume?

You can migrate documents and other files from Google Drive to OneDrive in a high volume by using a business data migration tool like CloudFuze. The high-speed transfer rate of CloudFuze’s migration servers ensures seamless transfer of Google Drive documents to OneDrive and SharePoint Online.

3. Can I transfer files from Google Drive to OneDrive along with versions?

You can select specific or all file versions when migrating with CloudFuze. Do note that migrating file versions increase data size in OneDrive as every migrated version gets doubled in the destination. Learn more about this in our File Versions Migration Guide.

4. What happens when folder paths in Google Drive exceed the 400-character limit of OneDrive?

CloudFuze trims paths with 400 or more characters to have 350 characters. Following this step, CloudFuze creates a long file name and will dump the rest of the data into that folder.

5. Is it possible to move Google Drive folders to OneDrive while retaining the folder structure?

Yes, CloudFuze’s migration tool retains file and folder structure while preserving user account hierarchy.

6. How to transfer files from Google Drive to Microsoft OneDrive with embedded links?

You can use CloudFuze to transfer Google Drive files with embedded links to OneDrive. Our link migration tool, LinkEx, transfers different types of embedded links, including Open ID links, IF condition links, and shared links without breaking them. Learn more with our Embedded Links Migration Guide.

7. What timestamp to transfer from Google Drive to OneDrive?

With CloudFuze, you get the flexibility to either migrate created time or modified time of Google Drive files and folders.

8. How to migrate Google Drive files to OneDrive with in-line comments?

CloudFuze transfers in-line comments from Google Drive to OneDrive of all the files selected. This feature helps ensure continuity of collaboration in the Microsoft 365 destination.

9. What is the best way to lower API throttling risk?

In most cases, API throttling occurs when more files are moved in a given time frame. CloudFuze automatically detects when the source or destination APIs are nearing throttling. The tool then slows down the transfer rate to lower the risks.

10. How to move files from Google Drive to OneDrive without disrupting file access?

CloudFuze’s Google Drive to OneDrive migration tool uses a copy-and-paste action to migrate Google Drive to OneDrive. Therefore, access to files that are currently being transferred to OneDrive will not be affected in any way.

11. How to transfer commenters when migrating from Google Drive to OneDrive?

CloudFuze will migrate commenters on Google Drive as viewers on OneDrive.