KeepsakeHow do I move documents out of Google Drive or OneDrive into a document vault?
How do I move documents out of Google Drive or OneDrive into a document vault?
Sync or download the folder so it exists on your own disk, then import that folder. There is no need to connect the vault to your cloud account: the desktop client already keeps a real copy of every file, and the web pages of all four services will download a folder as an archive if you do not use one.
This is where most people actually keep documents: a folder in Drive or OneDrive called Documents, or Scans, or Important. It works, up to a point, and the point it stops working at is worth being precise about.
Cloud storage is very good at holding files and knows nothing about what is in them. It cannot tell you a passport expires in March, cannot find the policy number inside a scan, and gives everyone who has the link everything at once. Filing is the part it does not do.
Getting the folder onto your disk
The import reads a folder on the machine you are sitting at, so the folder has to be there. Three ways, in order of how little work they are:
- You already have it. Google Drive for desktop, OneDrive on Windows and Dropbox all keep a real folder. Check for placeholder files first — a file that is online-only is a stub of a few bytes until something opens it. Right-click the folder and choose to keep it available offline, and let it finish before you import.
- Download it from the web. Every one of these services will let you select a folder and download it; you get a zip. Unpack it — an importer that cannot see inside an archive cannot tell you what it filed, so archives are refused rather than opened.
- Take the whole account export. Google Takeout and the Microsoft equivalent produce everything at once. It is the heaviest option and the right one if you are leaving rather than filing.
On a phone, the same rule holds: the folder must be on the device or reachable through the files picker. Downloading a folder to a phone and importing it works, and doing the whole job at a desk once is less annoying.
Why there is no "Connect to Google Drive" button
Connecting to Drive is a feature we could ship and have deliberately not. It would mean asking you for access to a Google account, holding a token that keeps that access alive, and putting a server in the path between your documents and your vault.
The entire premise of this product is that your documents are encrypted on your device with a key we do not have. An importer that signed in on your behalf would be the one part of it that had to be trusted rather than checked — and it would break the day the other company changed their terms, which is not a hypothetical for anyone who has watched integrations disappear.
So: Keepsake reads the folder that is on your disk. It does not sign in to Drive, and there is no Google or Microsoft account involved at any point. The cost is that you sync or download the folder first. The benefit is an import path that works offline, works forever, and asks you to trust nothing.
What the folder names get you
An ordinary cloud folder has no manifest and no metadata beyond file names and folder names — and those are worth more than they look:
Documents/
Passports/
ali-passport-2031.pdf
Insurance/
car-aviva-2026.pdf
Bills/
octopus-march.pdfFolder names that match a category are mapped to it, and every folder name is kept as a tag whether it mapped or not — so a folder called Nursery leaves its documents findable by the word you chose, filed under Other rather than under a category the importer made up.
File names become titles, tidied up: separators become spaces, and a leading scanner prefix or a trailing date stamp is not mistaken for part of the name.
If you want more than that — real expiry dates, policy numbers, issuing authorities — write a sidecar file. It is nine columns of CSV and a spreadsheet can produce it in ten minutes.
Running it twice on purpose
The usual shape of this job is not one import. It is: import the folder, notice three more folders you forgot, import again. So the import is built to be run repeatedly — a file the vault already holds is skipped and said to be skipped, so a second run of the same folder adds nothing and tells you so, and adding thirty documents and re-running brings in exactly thirty.
The match is on the file's contents, not its name, so a file you renamed after the first import is still recognised as one you already have.
What to do with the cloud folder afterwards
Nothing, for a while. Keep it until the vault is genuinely working and you have opened a few documents out of it — a migration you have not tested is a belief.
After that, it is worth being honest about what a shared Drive folder full of documents is: a link away from everything at once, sitting in an account whose password is probably older than the folder. Two things worth doing whether or not you use a vault: turn on two-factor authentication on that account, and check who the folder is shared with. Sharing is sticky and almost nobody reviews it.
Step by step
- Make sure the folder is really on the disk. Sync it offline, or download it and unpack the zip. Placeholder files that are online-only will not import as documents.
- Give the folders names you would search for. Five minutes of renaming before the import is worth more than any amount of tidying after it, because every folder name becomes a tag.
- Optionally add a sidecar with the dates. A CSV of file names and expiry dates turns a folder of files into a filed archive with working reminders.
- Import the folder. On Windows, Add Document then Import a Folder. On Android, the import button on the upload screen. In the web app, Import in the sidebar. Nothing is uploaded and nobody is signed in to.
- Read the summary and re-run if you add more. The end of the import names everything it skipped and why. Re-running after adding files is safe and is how the tool expects to be used.
Questions
Does Keepsake connect to my Google Drive or OneDrive account?
No. There is no sign-in, no OAuth prompt, no access token stored and no Google or Microsoft account involved. Keepsake reads a folder that is already on your disk — which is why the import works with no internet connection and cannot stop working because another company changed its API.
My Drive files are online-only. Will they import?
Not until they are downloaded. An online-only file is a placeholder of a few bytes on disk. Mark the folder as always available offline and let it finish syncing first; the import can only read what is actually there.
Should I delete the cloud copy afterwards?
Not straight away. Keep it until you have used the vault for a while and opened a few documents from it. When you do clean up, the useful step is not deleting — it is checking who that folder was shared with, because sharing is sticky and rarely reviewed.
Can I import a zip file directly?
No, and that is deliberate. An importer that opens archives cannot reliably tell you what it filed or what it refused, and archives are a common way to smuggle something that is not a document. Unpack it and import the folder — one extra step, and every file is then named in the summary.
What about iCloud Drive or Dropbox?
The same, and there is nothing special about any of them here: get the folder onto the disk, import the folder. Because the input is a folder rather than an integration, a service we have never heard of works exactly as well as one we have.
Where Keepsake fits
Keepsake is our product, so read this part with that in mind. Everything above is true whether or not you use it, and most of it you can do with a folder and an afternoon.
This is Keepsake's fallback importer, and it is the fallback because it needs nothing at all to be true about where the files came from. It runs on Windows, Android and the web app from the same shared definition, and the folder on your disk is the entire input — no sign-in, no connector, no server of ours.
Where it goes beyond a cloud folder: the documents are encrypted on your device with a key derived from your password, the text inside scans is read so you can search it, expiry dates produce reminders before the thing expires, and there is a sealed way for someone you choose to open the vault if you cannot. If you want the files to keep syncing between your own machines afterwards, Keepsake will use your own cloud account for that too — the encrypted vault, in a folder that Drive or OneDrive syncs like any other, with the keys never leaving your devices.