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Google Workspace admins and organizations have the option to enable client-side encryption for files in their domain. This encryption encodes and provides another layer of security beyond the standard AES 256-bit encryption that Google Drive provides to files that are considered confidential. However, some restrictions come with encrypted files — such as the ability to comment or edit being limited to one person at a time.
However, one of the known restrictions to encrypted files is now being lifted — making a copy of it. You will now be able to make a copy of an existing encrypted Doc, Sheet, or Slide by clicking on File > Make a copy, just as you can for non-encrypted files. This will allow teams to have pre-saved files that can be used as “templates” or a baseline for new files.
This feature will begin its gradual two-week rollout on May 26th, 2022, for Rapid Release domains, while Scheduled Release domains won’t start seeing it until June 9th, 2022. Unfortunately, the feature will only be available to Google Workspace customers on the Enterprise Plus, Education Standard, and Education Plus tiers.
