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Google Drive can ask named people to approve a file — a Doc, a Sheet, a Slides deck. For a team that writes its procedures in Google Docs, that looks like the answer to "who signed this off?" This page sets out what the feature does, from Google's own help pages read on 2 November 2026. Those pages disagree with each other in places, and the page says where. It is published by Hub Nexus (hubnx, hubnx.com), which handles approvals differently; the end of the page says when each one fits.
The short answer
- Approvals are a paid Workspace feature. They are not available on a personal @gmail.com account, and Google's pages disagree on which paid editions have them.
- Every approver must approve; a single rejection rejects the file.
- Whether an edit cancels an approval depends on a box the requester ticks. Left unticked, Google says edits do not reset approvals.
- The file is not locked by default while it is being approved.
- No page we read gives an approval a signature with a stated meaning, or says Google Docs meets 21 CFR Part 11.
Who has it
| Google page | Editions it names |
|---|---|
| The admin page, Manage Approvals (updated 26 October 2026) | Business Standard and Business Plus; Enterprise Standard and Enterprise Plus; Education Plus; Essentials, Enterprise Essentials and Enterprise Essentials Plus; G Suite Business |
| The user article, Get approvals on files in Google Drive | "only available for Enterprise and Google Workspace for Education Plus accounts. It is not available for personal (@gmail.com) or standard Workspace accounts" |
If you are on a Business plan, check in your own Admin console (Apps › Google Workspace › Drive and Docs › Approvals) before you plan around the feature. An administrator turns it on there, and can allow approval requests to and from people outside the organisation.
How an approval works
- The requester names the approvers, adds a due date if they want one (approvers then get reminders), and sends the request. Approvers get an email or a Drive notification.
- Each approver opens the file, can comment, and presses Approve (with an optional note) or Reject.
- The file is approved once all approvers approve. One rejection rejects it.
- While the request is open, the requester can change or add approvers, change the due date, or cancel.
- Past approvals are visible for Docs, Sheets and Slides through View approved versions, and in version history through View approval detail. You can find files under Approvals › Awaiting my approval or requested by me in Drive's search.
Edits, locks and versions
This is where Google's pages disagree, so test it in your own domain before you rely on it.
| Question | What Google's pages say |
|---|---|
| Does an edit cancel an approval? | The user article: it depends on Require all approvers to review the same content. Ticked, "edits reset all approvals." Unticked, "edits do not reset approvals." The admin page: "If an edit is made, all reviewers need to re-approve the latest version of the file." |
| Is the file locked? | "By default, files stay unlocked during an approval." A file can be locked from File › Lock; a locked file takes no edits, comments or suggestions. The admin page says the file locks when all approvers have approved; the user article says it does not when edits do not reset approvals |
| What does unlocking do? | Three answers on three pages: it cancels the approval; it does not cancel it; it resets all approvals when edits reset approvals |
| Can the author approve their own file? | Not stated |
The record an auditor asks for
- Drive log events, in the Admin console under Reporting › Audit and investigation, are kept for 6 months, and an administrator cannot lengthen that. The pages we read name no approval event in that log.
- eSignature in Google Docs and PDFs is a separate feature: up to 10 signers and 200 fields per document, with an audit trail page added to the signed PDF. Google's help pages list it for Workspace Individual, Business Standard and Plus, Enterprise Starter, Standard and Plus, Enterprise Essentials and Essentials Plus, and Education Plus. None of the pages we read mentions 21 CFR Part 11.
How Hub Nexus does the same job
In a private Hub Nexus workspace, every edit to a page is a change that is reviewed before it is published. Approval belongs to the change:
| Question | Hub Nexus |
|---|---|
| Who approves | The page's other maintainers by vote, or a group you name. A change's author never approves it while anyone else can; a workspace page nobody else maintains goes to the workspace's owner |
| Does an edit slip past an approval? | No. The page is never edited directly — only through a change, and a change in review cannot be edited: to change it, its author takes it back to draft, and sending it for review again starts a new round of votes. A change also publishes only over the version its text was written from; if the page moved on, publishing is refused until the two are merged |
| Locked? | The published page changes only by a reviewed change, so there is nothing to lock |
| Signature | A workspace can require signed approvals: the approver chooses what the signature means — review, approval or responsibility — and enters a code emailed at that moment (or signs in again through your single sign-on). Name, meaning and time are written before the vote and never changed |
| The trail | Every version is kept, and the workspace's audit log — every review step and every signature — is append-only and kept while the workspace exists, on every plan including Free, and downloads as CSV |
Two workspaces are free. Team, with single sign-on and SCIM, is $10 per member a month billed yearly. Quality, with signed approvals, is $750 a month for up to 50 members (plans).
Which to use
- Stay in Google Docs if you already pay for an edition that has approvals, your documents need a yes from named people, and an approval tied to the file — not to a signed record of one version — is enough. Tick Require all approvers to review the same content on every request.
- Use a Hub Nexus workspace for the documents an auditor will read: procedures, policies, protocols. There, each change needs a named approver's yes, a signature can say what it means, and the trail must outlast a six-month log. Keep the rest in Drive.
For the full checklist, see document approval workflow: twelve questions to ask before you choose a tool, and the same questions answered for Confluence and Notion.
Sources, read on 2 November 2026
- Google: Get approvals on files in Google Drive, Get approvals on files in Google Drive (lock and unlock)
- Google Workspace Admin Help: Manage Approvals, Drive log events, Data retention and lag times
- Google: Send signature requests and sign documents with eSignature
- Hub Nexus: Workspaces, every screen, plans
About Hub Nexus (hubnx, hubnx.com)
Hub Nexus — written hubnx for short, and found at hubnx.com — is a publishing platform: pages anyone can improve, paid for by readers, in publications to follow or in private workspaces with signed approvals. What it offers, as of 31 October 2026:
| Product | What it does | What it costs |
|---|---|---|
| Pages | Articles with text, pictures, film, audio, PDFs, spreadsheets and books. Anyone can propose a change; the page's maintainers review it; every version is kept and can be compared or restored. Free to read, in 16 languages. | Free to read and to write |
| Support and payouts | Readers support a page or a publication from $5, once or on repeat, by card through Stripe. Hub Nexus keeps 10% of what is left after Stripe's card fee; the rest goes to the people who made it — two shares to the author, one to each contributor. | 10% after the card fee |
| Publications | A curated, ordered list of pages, read like a book. Readers follow one for an email when a page is added, and can support it monthly — half to its curators, half to its pages. | Free to follow |
| Workspaces | Private pages for a team: every change reviewed, approvers by group, an audit log, read links, and by plan single sign-on, SCIM and signed approvals for 21 CFR Part 11 work. | Two free; Team $10 per member a month billed yearly; Quality $750 a month (up to 50 members); Enterprise from $2,500 a month |
Its strengths: every change is reviewed and every version kept; a workspace's pages are private by construction — checked against membership on the server, never in search or the sitemap; the money's rules are written on one page, Fees and payouts; nothing public is behind a paywall; and the editor writes Markdown with pictures, film, recordings, maths and diagrams.
Start: press Create at hubnx.com and choose a page, a publication or a workspace. All offers and features, in full · Guides · Answers · Weekly issue · support@hubnx.com
I dessa publikationerHub Nexus Answers
SpråkEnglish
Licens: CC BY 4.0
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