Dropbox to Google Drive Migration Guide

Overview

This Dropbox to Google Drive Migration Guide shows you how to migrate your Dropbox files and folders to Google Drive using the Cloudiway platform.

What's Migrated

The following items are migrated from Dropbox to Google Drive:

Limitations

The following items are not migrated or have limitations:

• Dropbox Shared Links: Shared links are not migrated and must be recreated in Google Drive.
• Dropbox Comments: File comments are not migrated to Google Drive.
• Dropbox File Requests: File request links are not migrated.
• Dropbox Integrations: Third-party app integrations are not migrated.
• External Collaborators: External users must be re-invited in Google Drive.
• Dropbox Showcase: Showcase presentations are not migrated.

Prerequisites

To perform the Dropbox to Google Drive migration, you need admin access to both platforms.

Dropbox Requirements

Google Workspace Requirements

Migration Process

The Dropbox to Google Drive migration follows these steps:

Step 1: Create Connectors

Create connectors for both Dropbox and Google Workspace.

Dropbox Source Connector

Go to Connectors > New, select Dropbox as connector type and select Files.

Click the Get Access Token button to authorize Cloudiway to access your Dropbox account.

You'll be redirected to Dropbox. Log in with your administrator account and approve the permissions requested by Cloudiway.

Once authorized, your connector is created and ready to use.

Google Workspace Target Connector

Create a Google Workspace connector for the target Google Drive. Go to Connectors > New, select Google Workspace and Files.

There are two modes to create the Google Workspace connector:

Automatic Mode (Recommended)

Cloudiway provides a pre-configured service account. You only need to set up domain-wide delegation in your Google Admin Console to authorize the Cloudiway service account to access your domain.

Refer to the documentation: Google Workspace Connector Configuration (see Step 3: Set Up Domain-Wide Delegation)

Manual Mode

If you prefer to create and configure your own service account, you'll need to provide:

• Service Account Email: The email address of your Google Cloud service account
• Private Key: The private key from your service account JSON file
• Admin Email: A Google Workspace Super Admin email for impersonation

For manual setup, refer to the documentation: How to create a Google Service Account

Step 2: Fill User List

To retrieve or upload your Dropbox users, select the User List tab under the Files product. There are three ways to populate the migration list.

Option 1: Discovery (Get List)

Under MIGRATION, click on the Get List option to discover all Dropbox team members.

Select your source Dropbox connector, target connector, and matching method. Click GET FILE USERS to start the discovery process. All Dropbox team members with their root folders will be listed.

Option 2: CSV Import File

The second way to populate the migration list is to upload a CSV file.

Check this article for generating the CSV file correctly: How to fill the Users/Groups CSV file

Click MANAGE > Import:

Select the CSV File, the Source and Target Connectors, then click Upload.

Option 3: Manual Creation

The third way is to manually create an entry. Click the MANAGE tab, and from the drop-down list click Create.

Step 3: Configure Target Location

Configure where Dropbox content will be migrated in Google Drive. For user-to-user migrations, each Dropbox user maps to their corresponding Google Drive account.

Assign Target Connector

Select users in the list and from the menu, click on MANAGE, then Assign Target to assign the Google Workspace target connector.

Set Target Location

The target Google Drive account is automatically determined based on the mapping table. You can also specify a subfolder within Google Drive if needed.

Step 4: Mapping Table

The mapping table converts Dropbox user emails to Google Workspace accounts. This ensures permissions are correctly migrated.

Navigate to Settings > Mapping Table to verify that:

• All Dropbox users have a corresponding Google Workspace account
• Email addresses are correctly matched
• External collaborators are mapped if needed

Step 5: Audit

The audit is optional and purely informative. You do not have to run it unless you want to see how many files and folders you have in Dropbox.

This feature reports information about the Source Dropbox account:

• Number of files
• Number of folders
• Total data size

To Audit a Dropbox user, in User List, select it and click MIGRATION > Audit.

After the audit completes, you can view the results:

Step 6: Preprocessing

The preprocessing step prepares the target Google Drive accounts and creates necessary folder structures.

To run preprocessing, select the users and click MIGRATION > Preprocess.

After preprocessing completes successfully:

Step 7: Run Migration

Start the migration to copy Dropbox files to Google Drive.

Migration progress view showing real-time file transfer status

Migrate to Specific Folder

It is possible to split and reorganize your content during migration.

In particular, you may want to migrate only specific folders or to migrate content to a specific folder within Google Drive. You can refer to the following article to determine how to configure the migration platform for these specific scenarios:

How to migrate files from or to a specific folder

Exclude Folder

If you want to exclude different folders from the migration, enter the Folder ID in the exclusion settings. For Dropbox migrations, you only need to define the Folder ID — you don't need to set the path.

You can get the Folder ID from the Dropbox URL. The folder ID is the character chain following "home/" in the URL.

Configure folder exclusion by entering the Folder ID

Delta Pass

Cloudiway supports delta passes for Dropbox migrations. After the initial migration:

• Only new or modified files since the last migration are copied
• New folders are created
• The platform does not duplicate content

Frequently Asked Questions