Lucidchart allows users to create, edit, and share diagrams with one another in real-time. With the integration for Google Drive, you can open, store, and share these diagrams through Google Drive. The Lucidchart app also works with Google Team Drive, allowing you to move files from your personal Drive to your Team Drive.

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Connect Lucidchart with Google Drive

To connect your Lucidchart account to your Google Drive account, follow these steps:

Navigate to your Account Settings.
Select the Apps & Integrations tab.
Under "Google Drive", click Link to Drive.
Select the Google account you want to use and click through the dialog to grant Lucidchart permissions to your Google account.

Your account will now be linked to Google Drive, and you will now have the capability to sync the Lucidchart diagrams you created to your Drive account, create diagrams from Google Drive, and set up weekly backups. See the sections below to learn more about the difference between automatic sync and backups.

Note: If your account's admin has set up the Google Workspace integration for your Lucidchart account, they have the ability to restrict or enforce backup capabilities for the whole account.

Match email address to link Lucidchart to Google Drive

In order to connect your Lucidchart account with Drive, both accounts need to be connected to the same email address. If you are currently using two different email addresses for each, please follow these steps to properly connect:

Change your Lucidchart email address in your Account Settings.
Click Save.
Log out of all Google accounts, then log into the Google account that is using email address associated with your Lucidchart account.
Navigate back to your Lucidchart account settings and connect to your Google Drive account.

Link correct Lucidchart account to Google Drive

If Lucidchart prevents you from changing your email to match the email address associated with your Drive account, it is likely that you accidentally created a new Lucidchart account through Drive. Follow these instructions to remove your accidental Lucidchart account and sync the correct account with Drive.

Log in to your new accidental Lucidchart account. You can use Google Single Sign-On if the accidental account uses the same email address as Drive.
Navigate to your Account Settings.
Select the Apps & Integrations tab from the left-side menu.
Under "Google Drive", select Unlink Account.
Select User Settings from the left-side menu.
Click Delete Account at the bottom of the page and follow the prompts to permanently delete your account.
Log in to your active Lucidchart account and change your Lucidchart email address in your Account Settings to match your Google Drive email address exactly.
Click Save.
Log out of your Lucidchart account and any Google Accounts.
Clear your cookies.
Log in to your Lucidchart account using the newly entered email address with the same password as before.
Go the Google Drive section of your Account settings and click Link to Google Drive.
Log in to your Google Drive account using the same email address as your active Lucidchart account.

Create a new diagram from Google Drive

You can navigate to Lucidchart to create a new diagram without leaving Google Drive. To do so, follow these steps:

From Drive, select New > More > Lucidchart Diagrams.
A new document will be opened in the Lucidchart editor.
Rename the document.
Diagram on the canvas.
Your file is saved to Lucidchart and synced with your Drive account.
- Your document will be accessible through both Lucidchart and Drive only if you have automatic synchronization enabled.

Export to Google Drive

After creating a diagram in Lucidchart, you can choose to export the file as a PDF, PNG, or JPEG directly to your Google Drive account.

To export to Drive:

From your Lucidchart document, select File > Export to Google Drive.
Choose the file type and other preferences and click Done.
A blue message box will appear when the download is complete.
The exported file will appear in the root folder of your Google Drive and in your Recent documents.

Automatic sync vs. backups

Synchronization

You can choose to have the diagrams you create in Lucidchart automatically synced to Google Drive. This means you can access all of your Lucidchart documents via Google Drive without going to Lucidchart. However, you will not be able to edit Lucidchart documents unless you open them in Lucidchart.
All synced files will initially appear in a folder called “Lucidchart” in your Google Drive account. Once they have appeared you are free to move them to other folders in your Drive. Please do not delete the original Lucidchart folder unless you no longer wish to use the integration.

Learn more: The Google Drive integration doesn't support sync of diagrams in team folders, except for the user that created the document originally. To learn more, refer to this community post.

Backup

If you are on an Individual, Team, or Enterprise account, you can set up a weekly backup of your Lucidchart documents to Google Drive. If you set this up, you will receive an LAF backup file in your Google Drive account every week. You can then restore your documents to Lucidchart, as explained in our Lucid for your Google Workspace Domain article.

Permissions

Lucidchart’s integration with Google Drive requires a few permissions to give you a seamless diagramming experience:

View basic information about your account: Allows Lucidchart to auto-provision an account and bring you immediately into the editor rather than to a registration or sign-in page.
View your email address: Enables Google Single Sign-On.
View and manage Google Drive files that you have opened or created with Lucidchart: Ensures that your most recent Lucidchart file is synced to your Drive account.
Perform these operations when I’m not using the application: Required for automated backup of files on a weekly basis as selected in your Lucidchart Google Drive preferences.

Collaborate via Google Drive

If you have automatic sync enabled, you can easily collaborate on Lucidchart documents by sharing documents via Google Drive.

To share a document on Google Drive, follow these steps:

Right-click any file from the “Lucidchart” folder in your Google Drive.
Select Share.
Enter your collaborator’s information.
Click Done.

Then, your collaborator can access the Lucidchart document by right-clicking the file and selecting Open With > Lucidchart.

Please note the following:

If you share a document via Google Drive, these sharing permissions will not be noted in the document’s collaboration settings on Lucidchart. To remove collaborator’s permissions, simply unshare the document on Google Drive.
Permissions will be inherited from Lucidchart or Google Drive based on which one has greater permissions. For example, if a document is shared with Edit access in Lucidchart to a user who only has read access in Google Drive, the user will still receive edit access.

Use Lucidchart with Google Team Drive

Lucidchart's integration with Google Team Drive allows you to move Lucidchart files from your personal drive to your Team Drive. Permissions will be inherited from Lucidchart or Team Drive based on which one has greater permissions. For example, if a document is shared with Edit access in Lucidchart to a user who only has read access in Team Drive, the user will still receive edit access.

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