At a glance
| Unit to report | GB, with the Gmail and Drive split, plus the number of users and shared drives. |
| Where the count lives | Google Admin console, Menu, then Storage. The top of the page shows total storage used against the limit; pointing at the chart splits it by Drive, Gmail and Photos. The same page lists users and shared drives using the most storage. |
| Typical years retained | Mail and files stay until a user deletes them or a Vault retention rule removes them. The oldest message in the founder's mailbox is the practical start year; the subscription start under Billing is a proxy if the domain was always on Workspace. |
| What usually makes it valuable | Gmail threads where decisions were argued through, Docs and Sheets with full revision history and comments, Chat spaces by team, Meet recordings and transcripts saved to Drive. |
| What stays private | Every name, address and identifier of staff, customers and counterparties. Client material held under their agreements. Licensed third-party content. External collaborators' contributions. |
Paths checked against Google Workspace Admin Help: Review storage use across your organization and Export all your organization's data. The Admin console menu is reorganised often, so check in your version.
Where the count lives
Nothing needs exporting. One page in the Admin console.
- Sign in to the Google Admin console as a super administrator, or as an admin with the Storage administrator privilege.
- Open the Menu and choose Storage.
- Read the total at the top: storage used against the organisation's limit. Point at the chart to see how much is Google Drive, Gmail and Google Photos. The page can lag real usage by up to 24 hours, which does not matter for the intake.
- Scroll to Users using the most storage and Shared drives using the most storage. View all users and View all shared drives give the full ranked lists; the number of rows is your user count and shared drive count.
- Years: open Gmail as the longest-serving account, search before: with an early date, and keep stepping back until nothing is returned. The earliest hit is the start year. If you migrated in from another provider, the oldest mail may predate the Workspace subscription.
If you prefer the reporting area, Reporting, then Reports & monitoring, then the Apps usage user report shows Gmail activity and Drive storage per person. The Storage page is quicker.
What to put in the intake
| Field | What to enter | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Volume | Total GB with the Gmail and Drive split, user count, shared drive count. | 1.8 TB total, Gmail 420 GB, Drive 1.4 TB, 38 users, 12 shared drives |
| Years covered | Start year from the oldest mail, any migration in, and whether a Vault retention rule trims old mail or Chat. | 2015 to now, continuous, Chat history on since 2021 |
| Estimate | Tick it if you read the chart rather than adding up the lists. | Ticked |
Estimates are fine. The total on the Storage page is enough on its own.
Why buyers value it
A Workspace domain is a business's working record in its own words. Gmail threads carry the question, the pushback and the sign-off with timestamps and roles, which is the material buyers pay most for. Docs, Sheets and Slides keep every revision and every comment thread, so how a proposal or a policy was drafted, challenged and revised is on the record, not only the final version. Chat spaces hold the same exchanges at a faster tempo, organised by team. Meet recordings and transcripts in Drive add the conversations that settled things. Calendar shows how the organisation actually spent its time. Shared drives, where a business has used them, arrive already organised by team or project, which raises the value of everything inside them.
What stays private
- Names, email addresses, phone numbers, addresses, account numbers and the rest of the 60+ identifier types are irreversibly removed from every message, document, transcript and comment before any buyer sees anything, with each removal written to the audit ledger. People become stable role labels.
- Material you hold for clients under their agreements, and licensed third-party content such as purchased reports, stock imagery or supplier catalogues, is filtered out at extraction.
- Contributions from external collaborators and anything in a sensitive category (HR files, health information, payroll) are excluded at extraction.
- Buyers receive a prepared, de-identified copy under licence, never access to the domain and never the raw export. The Trust and Security pages cover the full process.
If you want to export the full history
Only after an offer is accepted. Until then the intake runs on the counts you type in. In most engagements we connect read-only with your signature and you export nothing. This is Google's documented route if you would rather hand over files.
- Sign in as a super administrator whose account is at least 30 days old and has 2-Step Verification on. Organisations with more than 1,000 users need to contact Google support before the tool will run.
- In the Admin console open Menu, then Data, then Data import & export, then Data export. Click Set up new export, name it, and choose Export all user data for the entire organization or a set of users, groups or organisational units.
- Click Start export. Google emails when the export is ready: no earlier than 48 hours, typically about 72 hours, up to 14 days for a large domain. It covers Gmail, Drive including shared drives, Chat, Calendar, Contacts, Keep, Tasks and Vault-retained data.
- The export lands in a Google Cloud Storage bucket and is deleted 60 days after the export started, so download it inside that window.
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