Unshare a Google Doc in Windows

 

Unshare a Google Doc on Desktop

There are two ways you can share a Google Docs document—by link-sharing or by adding someone to a document using their email. You can unshare a Google Doc no matter which method was originally used to share it, but the steps are a bit different for each.

Email Sharing

If you invited someone to a Google Doc using their email, then unsharing the document is as simple as removing their email from it.

To get started, open the Google Docs document you’d like to stop sharing. In the top-right corner of the window, you’ll see a “Share” button. If you hover your cursor over this button, a tooltip will appear telling you how many people you’ve shared the document with. Go ahead and click it.

The document sharing pop-up will appear. Locate the name of the person you want to remove from the document. To the right, you’ll see their current privileges. Click the down arrow next to that.

Next, click “Remove” from the bottom of the drop-down menu that appears.

Finally, click the blue “Save” button.

The person you removed from the list will now no longer have access to the Google Docs document.

Link Sharing

Another method of sharing is by sending others a link, to either the file page or a direct download, with certain permissions. You can undo this by simply changing the permissions of the link.

Open the document you’d like to stop sharing and then click the blue “Share” button in the top-right corner of the window. You can also see a tooltip if you hover your cursor over the Share button. This tooltip tells you who can access the document with the link based on the set permissions.

A pop-up window will appear. Click “Change” in the Get Link group.

In the next window, you’ll see the link and, under that, the permissions set for that link. The permission needs to be set to “Restricted,” which means that only people you’ve added with their email can access the document through this link. Click the down arrow to show the list of options.

Next, click “Restricted” from the drop-down menu.

Finally, click the blue “Done” button in the bottom-right corner of the pop-up window.

Anyone who previously had access to the document with the link will now need to be added with their email to regain access.

If you’d rather someone else manage a file, don’t forget that you can easily change the file owner in Google Drive.