How to Migrate Data from Google Drive to Microsoft 365 (Step-by-Step Guide)

Why Companies Migrate Google Drive to Office 365?

Nobody moves an entire Drive environment on a whim. The reasons tend to cluster around a handful of business events:

Merger & Acquisition

IT team wants to cut the licence cost

Team requires SharePoint governance and retention control

Rebrand comes with a new tenant

Teams who want one platform instead of two

Main goal is to get every file, folder, and Google Doc into Microsoft 365 in a form employees still recognize, without breaking sharing links or losing version history along the way.

What Does Migrate Data from Google Drive to Microsoft 365 Actually Mean?

A complete migration covers more than “copy the files.” Here’s what typically needs to survive the move:

• Files and folders: All the PDFs & standard file types move, with the original folder hierarchy preserved.
• Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides: native Google formats that need to be converted into Word, Excel, and PowerPoint equivalents so they open correctly in Microsoft 365.
• Metadata: creation dates, modified dates, and ownership records.
• Shared Drives: team-owned Google Shared Drives, which usually map to SharePoint team sites rather than an individual’s OneDrive.

Miss any of these and the first weeks after go-live turn into a support queue of “my folder is empty” and “this file won’t open” tickets.

Where Migrated Files Actually Land in Microsoft 365?

This trips people up constantly: there’s no single “Google Drive equivalent” in Microsoft 365. Where a file ends up depends on what kind of file it was in Google Drive.

• My Drive (personal files) generally maps to OneDrive for Business, where each user gets a default storage allocation that Microsoft can extend on request.
• Shared Drives and team folders map to SharePoint Online, which is built for content that needs to stay accessible to a group rather than one person.
• Microsoft Teams often sits on top of SharePoint for files shared inside a specific team or channel.

Getting this split right up front- personal files to OneDrive, shared/team content to SharePoint- avoids a messy re-shuffle later. It’s the same logic covered in Migrate Google Docs to Office 365: plan the destination before you plan the transfer.

The Real Obstacles in a Google Drive Migration

A few problems show up on nearly every project when migrate data from Google Drive to Microsoft 365, big or small:

• File format conversion: Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides aren’t stored the way Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files are. They need to be exported and converted, and that conversion doesn’t always preserve complex formatting, embedded objects, or comment threads perfectly.
• File size and volume limits: Migrating through Microsoft’s own tools comes with published ceilings. A maximum supported file size in the range of 250 GB per file when using Migration Manager or the SharePoint Migration Tool, and per-file limits as low as 15–20 GB depending on the destination service. Large media libraries or CAD archives can bump into these limits fast.
• Throttling during business hours: Microsoft can throttle migration activity to protect service performance, which is why large jobs are usually scheduled for evenings or weekends rather than the middle of the workday.
• Users on both sides: A migration that touches personal Drive content for dozens of employees means user mapping has to be built and verified in advance, not improvised mid-run.

Things to Know Before You Start Google Drive to Microsoft 365 Migration

• Confirm admin access on both the Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 tenants.
• Decide in advance which content goes to OneDrive versus SharePoint.
• Check available storage headroom on the Microsoft 365 side.
• Build a user-mapping list rather than mapping accounts on the fly.
• Review sharing permissions & decide how “Anyone with the link” content will be handled.

What If There’s No Google Workspace Tenant to Begin With? Not every migration starts from a tidy Workspace environment. It’s fairly common to find files scattered across several personal @gmail.com accounts with no admin console, no custom domain, and no managed Workspace tenant behind them, just people sharing documents between individual accounts. That matters because Migration Manager depends on a real Workspace admin: something that can install the migration app and authorize access across users at once. A personal Gmail account has none of that, so the Migration Manager path won’t connect to it to move files from Google Drive to Microsoft 365. Worth clearing up: Google One does not solve this. Even the higher-tier Google One AI plans, which bundle a few “Workspace Individual” perks, remain personal-account produce: no admin console, no Domain-Wide Delegation. A handful of those subscriptions get more storage per user, not a migratable Workspace tenant. Two practical paths instead: Google Takeout, per account: Each person exports their own Drive content through Google Takeout, then it’s manually uploaded into SharePoint or OneDrive. Simple, but manual, one account at a time, and sharing context doesn’t carry over. Per-account OAuth migration with a dedicated tool: A tool like the Cigati Google Workspace Backup Tool can authenticate against each Gmail account individually via OAuth 2.0. It can push content straight into the right Microsoft 365 destination, no admin console required, and folder structure and file conversion stay intact. If the group plans to keep collaborating long-term, it’s worth a separate conversation about setting up a proper Workspace or Microsoft 365 environment rather than continuing on personal accounts.

Transfer Google Drive Files to Microsoft 365 Using Migration Manager

Microsoft Migration Manager is a Microsoft 365 service that helps administrators move files from Google Drive to OneDrive & SharePoint. Also, it provides a centralized way to plan and monitor file migration while keeping the migration process organized.

Where it falls short

• This supports individual Google files up to 250 GB. Files larger than this limit cannot be migrated.
• Files that are not organized within a Google Drive structure, also called orphaned or unorganized files, are not scanned or included in migration reports.
• Moreover, some files or folders that exceed Microsoft 365/SharePoint restrictions cannot be migrated successfully, even if they are valid in Google Drive.
• Each migration task needs a valid destination in OneDrive, SharePoint, or Teams. Once migration starts for a destination, it cannot be changed for that task.
• Migration Manager creates copies in Microsoft 365. The original files remain in Google Drive, so they must be handled separately after migration if the organization plans to decommission Google Workspace.

Advanced Method to Migrate Data from Google Drive to Microsoft 365

Now, have a look at how the Cigati Google Drive Migration Tool works to perform the migration in this step-by-step guide.

What it’s built to handle:

• Cloud-to-cloud migration, moving files directly from Google Drive to OneDrive or SharePoint without downloading them locally first.
• Bulk migration across multiple users at once, with CSV-based mapping instead of one login at a time.
• Automatic conversion of Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides into Word, Excel, and PowerPoint formats.
• Resume-on-failure, picking a job back up from the last completed item instead of restarting from zero.
• A migration report detailing what moved, what was skipped, and what failed, per user.

For teams whose next step is folding accounts together rather than switching platforms, the same underlying approach applies to Transfer Google Drive Files to Another Account migrations within Google Workspace itself.

Migrate from Google Drive to Microsoft 365: Fixing Common Migration Problems

• Migration stalls mid-run: usually a dropped connection or expired token. Resume functionality should pick the job up from the last completed file rather than starting over.
• Google Docs open incorrectly in Word: confirm the conversion setting was enabled before the migration ran; converting after the fact is far messier than converting during transfer.
• Permissions don’t match: review the Google-to-SharePoint permission mapping table before migration, not after users start reporting access issues.
• Files appear missing: check folder filters and give the destination service time to finish indexing before assuming data was lost.
• Migration is slow: run in smaller batches and schedule outside business hours to avoid Microsoft’s own throttling.

Wrapping Up

Migrating from Google Drive to Microsoft 365 is rarely just a file copy. Folder structure, native Google file formats, sharing permissions, and Shared Drive ownership all need to survive the move, ideally without a support queue forming the week after. Migrate data from Google Drive to Microsoft 365 via Microsoft’s native Migration Manager handles straightforward cases reasonably well. Anything at real scale- hundreds of users, complex permission structures, or a hard requirement for an auditable report tends to need a dedicated tool such as Cigati Google Drive Migration Tool built specifically for cloud-to-cloud transfer.

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