How to Remove Someone From All Your Google Drive Files
A project ends, a contractor leaves, a relationship changes — and somewhere in your Drive that person can still open your files. Google Drive lets you remove someone from one file at a time. It has no button that removes a person from everything at once.
Free audit. Read-only. Nothing changes unless you approve it.
Find what they can still open
Drive's search can help. Searching to:their@email.com shows files you've shared with that address; sharedwith:their@email.com shows files they own or can access.
One limit worth knowing: Google says these searches don't return files shared before February 2021, so older shares can hide from them.
Remove them, one file at a time
Open each file's Share dialog, find the person, and remove them. It works, but on a Drive with years of sharing it is slow, and easy to miss one.
The folder trap
If the person got access through a shared folder, every file inside inherits that access, and you remove it at the folder, not the file. Removing them from the folder removes them from every file inside it that they could only reach through the folder.
The link trap
If a file is set to "Anyone with the link", removing the person doesn't stop them opening it with the link. Switch the link to Restricted as well.
What removing access can't undo
Anything they already downloaded or copied stays with them, and files they own aren't yours to change.
Doing it in one pass with NeatDrive
NeatDrive's External Access Review lists the people who can open your files from outside your account — or, for a Google Workspace account, from outside your organisation — with the files each one can reach. Pick a person and remove them across those files in one action; access they have through a shared folder is removed at the folder.
You confirm before anything changes, each removal is recorded, and on paid plans you can undo it from Recent Changes. The review reflects your latest scan, so run a fresh scan first if sharing has changed since. For a Workspace account, colleagues inside your own organisation aren't listed.
Removing access is a paid-plan action; seeing who has access is part of the free audit.