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List User's Files/Folders

📖 Definition

The "List User's Files/Folders" action in the Google Workspace category allows you to search for and retrieve a list of files or folders that a specified user either owns or has access to in their Google Drive.
This action provides powerful filtering and sorting capabilities, enabling you to customize the search based on file name, type (files, folders, or both), shared drive inclusion, custom queries, ordering preferences, labels, and more.

It’s especially useful for automating file management tasks, auditing user storage, or building dynamic flows that need to work with user drive content.

Key capabilities include:

  • Search across personal drives, shared drives, or the domain.
  • Apply detailed filters like excluding trashed items or searching by labels.
  • Fetch file metadata such as permissions, ownership, size, and links for easy automation.
  • Handle large file sets using pagination (Next Page Tokens).

🎯Example Use Cases

📂 User File Audit

Quickly retrieve and review all the files and folders a user owns or has access to, ideal for compliance checks and audits.

🔎 Locate Important Documents

Search for specific documents by name across a user’s drive to find critical files like contracts, reports, or project assets.

🧹 Clean-Up Unused Files

Identify and list files that have not been modified for a long time to assist with storage management and drive clean-up processes.

🤝 Track Shared Files

Generate a list of files shared with others from a user's drive to monitor external sharing activity for security purposes.

📑 Build Dynamic Lists for Workflows

Automatically fetch and display available user files within a workflow, enabling users to select and take actions like copy, move, or delete.

📦 Backup Preparation

Collect a list of all user-owned files before account deactivation or offboarding for backup or transfer purposes.


📥 Inputs

Connection

Provide your Google Workspace Administration connection.
You must upload a credential JSON file for a service account with domain-wide delegation. 👉 See guide for creating the connection.

User Email

Enter the primary email address of the user whose files and folders you want to list.
This determines which user’s Google Drive will be searched.

File Name

Specify part or all of the file or folder name to search for.
Only items containing this value in their name will be included in the results.

Search For

Choose whether you want to search for Files, Folders, or Both.
This helps you filter results based on the type of item you are looking for.

Exclude Trashed Items

Select Yes to exclude items in the Trash, or No to include them.
Helps ensure you are working only with active, non-deleted files if desired.

Query

Enter a custom query to further filter search results.
Queries can be based on properties like owner, modified date, MIME type, etc., using Google Drive search syntax.

Include Items from Shared Drives

Check True if you want to include files from both My Drive and Shared Drives in the results.
(Default is False, which restricts search to My Drive only.)

Order By

Define how results should be sorted.
Use comma-separated fields like modifiedTime desc, name to control ordering based on file properties.

Corpora

Specify the grouping of files the search applies to:

  • user: personal files
  • drive: files in a specific Shared Drive
  • domain: files shared across the domain
  • allDrives: a combination of My Drive and all Shared Drives

Spaces

Select where the search should occur:

  • drive: regular files and folders
  • appDataFolder: application-specific data stored in Drive

Drive ID

Provide the ID of the shared drive you want to search (only needed if you selected drive in Corpora).

Include Labels

Add a comma-separated list of label IDs to fetch additional metadata for files that have those labels applied.

Max Results

Set the maximum number of items to return (must be between 1 and 20,000).
Controls how many files/folders are retrieved per request.

Page Token

If continuing a previous search, enter the Page Token to fetch the next set of results.
If left empty, the first page will be retrieved.


⚡

Important Note:

To maximize the flexibility and power of your searches, you can use advanced query terms and operators when filling the Query field.

🔎 For a full list of available search query terms and operators, please visit Google Drive API Search Terms Guide.

📚 To see real-world examples of how to build effective search queries, check out Google Drive API Search Examples.

Taking advantage of these options allows you to perform more precise and tailored searches across your users' Google Drive content.


📤 Outputs

Result Count
Indicates the number of files or folders retrieved in the current search result. If the Next Page Token is present, it means there are additional items available beyond the current list.

Files/Folders
Details of each file or folder retrieved are provided with the following information:

  • Id
    The unique identifier of the file or folder.

  • Drive Id
    If the file or folder is located in a shared drive, this field shows the ID of that shared drive.

  • Description
    A brief description of the file, if one has been provided.

  • Name
    The name of the file or folder as it appears in Google Drive.

  • Mime Type
    The MIME type of the file, specifying the file format (e.g., application/pdf, application/vnd.google-apps.folder).

  • Version
    The version number of the file, useful for tracking changes or updates.

  • View Link
    A direct link for opening the file in a relevant Google editor or viewer via a browser.

  • Original Filename
    The original name of the uploaded content if available, otherwise it matches the current file name. This is mainly shown for files with binary content.

  • File Extension
    The extension of the file extracted from its name (e.g., "pdf", "docx", "tar.gz").

  • Download Link
    A direct link to download the file's content from Google Drive.

  • Size
    The file size in bytes.

  • Trashed
    Indicates whether the file or folder has been moved to the Trash, either directly or because its parent folder was trashed.

  • Modified Time
    The last time the file was edited by any user.

  • Created Time
    The time when the file was originally created.

  • Owners
    Information about the owner(s) of the file:

    • Display Name: The full name of the owner.
    • Email Address: The email address of the owner.

  • Permissions
    A full list of permissions granted on the file or folder, including:

    • Id: The ID of the specific permission setting.
    • Display Name: Name associated with the permission (e.g., user or group name).
    • Type: The type of entity (user, group, domain, anyone) the permission applies to.
    • Email Address: Email linked to the permission (for users/groups).
    • Role: The access level assigned (owner, writer, reader, etc.).
    • Domain: The domain associated with the permission.
    • Deleted: Whether the associated account has been deleted.
    • Pending Owner: Whether the account is pending ownership acceptance.
    • Allow File Discovery: Whether the file can be discovered via search (mainly for domain or public sharing).

  • Parents
    The IDs of parent folders that contain the file.

  • Shared
    Indicates whether the file has been shared with others (this field may not be populated for items stored in shared drives).

Next Page Token
A token to retrieve the next batch of results if there are more files or folders available beyond the current list. If absent, all available results have been retrieved.


💡Example

Imagine your organization needs to audit all documents created by a specific employee to ensure they comply with company policies.
You can set up the "List User's Files/Folders" action by:

  • Selecting the Google Workspace connection with the appropriate service account.
  • Entering the user's primary email.
  • Setting a File Name filter if you're looking for documents containing specific words (e.g., "Policy", "Agreement").
  • Choosing Search For to list Files, Folders, or Both.
  • Setting Exclude Trashed Items to "Yes" to avoid listing deleted files.
  • Optionally configuring Order By to sort the results by modifiedTime to quickly find the latest documents.

Once set up, when you run the flow, it will retrieve and list all active files or folders owned or accessible by the specified user based on your criteria.
You can then review, manage, or trigger further actions based on the listed results.

Updated 18 days ago