Good news: You won’t have to track down Google Workspace file access requests anymore

Remember all of those times when you have someone in your Google Workspace organization request access to a file you recently created or shared? Even if you shared it with the correct email address, they often come back and ask you to approve their personal account out of laziness since they refuse to swap over to the address you provided them as a part of your team? Yeah, I know that feeling all too well.

In those instances, you often have to visit your Gmail inbox and track down the email request, approve it and return back to the Doc, Sheet, or Slide to verify that they’re all set, if even only for your peace of mind.

In a complete super late and all-too Google move, a bit of common sense is being injected into the process to help streamline it. Now, any requests made on a file for access will now just…appear on the share menu – you know, where they probably should have been for years?

As you can see in the image below, a new ‘Review’ banner pops up at the top of the file’s share menu where you can see and approve or deny a request without having to fiddle with your email or any other messaging back and forth with the individual.

You’ll also have the option to choose the user’s access level (whether they’re a viewer, commentor or editor) and whether you want to notify them through email with a short message or not. This will also keep you from having to go and add that person manually at their verbal requests. The power is in their hands now, and you can just click through to solve the issue.

If you’re not already seeing this update, you can expect to within the next week for both Scheduled Release and Rapid Release domains. Also, a bit of good news too is that this is becoming available to absolutely everyone with a Google Account, personal and Workspace!