How to Save Attachments to Google Drive from Gmail

Email & Messaging

Updated July 09, 2019

If you receive many attachments to the emails you receive in your Gmail account, you might be smart to save them on Google Drive, where you can access them from any device with an internet connection and share them with others easily.

After saving a file to Google Drive from Gmail, you can very simply find and open it from inside Gmail.

This procedure works for Gmail on the web.

How to Save Attachments to Google Drive From Gmail

To save files attached to an email to your Google Drive account right from the message in Gmail:

Open the email with the attachment.
Position the mouse cursor over the attachment you want to save to Google Drive. Two icons appear superimposed on the attachment: one for Download and one for Save to Drive.
Select Save to Drive on the attachment to send it directly to Google Drive. If you have multiple folders already set up on Google Drive, you'll be prompted to choose the correct folder.
To save all the files that are attached to an email to Google Drive in one go, pick Save all to Drive positioned near the list of attachments. Note that you cannot move individual files to particular folders if you save them all at once, but you can move the saved documents individually in Google Drive.

How to Open a Saved Gmail Attachment in Drive

To open an attachment you just saved in Google Drive:

In the Gmail email containing the attachment icon, position the mouse cursor over the attachment you saved to Google Drive and want to open.
Select Organize in Drive.
In the fly-open menu that appears, choose the link to wherever you had saved the attachment. When you select it, Drive opens in a new window, with the attachment already selected.
If you have more than one folder set up on Google Drive, you may see Organize in Drive instead. You can opt to move the file to a different Google Drive folder before opening it.