The handoff step, step by step

Why the step is required

A guide that only its owner can reach is not a guide. No copy of your documents is held here, and nothing can be unlocked for your family from this side, so the walkthrough will not mark your guide ready until the four handoff facts are recorded. You do each step inside your signed-in account, but the sharing and the inactive-account option themselves are set in Google with their own tools. Confirmation that you completed each step, and the date, is recorded. Your provider's settings are not read, and the last page of the guide says so. The idea behind all four steps matches long-standing general advice: the National Institute on Aging recommends telling a trusted family member or friend where your important papers are kept, since someone needs to know where to look even if you keep the details of your affairs private⁷.

Step 1. Save the current guide to your own storage

Generate your family guide, then confirm in the walkthrough that this revision is saved in the folder in your Google Drive. If you later change an answer, the guide regenerates and the walkthrough asks you to confirm the new revision, so the copy your family finds is never older than your last change. The confirmation is tied to the file that was generated; an older revision cannot be confirmed as current.

Step 2. Share the folder with at least one named person

Pick the person your family would turn to first and share the top-level folder with them from inside Google Drive. In Google Drive, access set on a folder is inherited by every file inside it, so one share covers the scans you add later; Viewer access lets the person open and download files without changing them². In the walkthrough, choose the saved contact you shared with; only a person who is already recorded in your guide can be chosen, so the name on the handoff record matches the name your family will see on the Start here page.

Share with a person who has their own account, not with a group address, and tell them you have done it. A share nobody knows about is easy to miss in a full inbox.

Step 3. Set Google Inactive Account Manager

Your folder is in Google Drive, so set up Google Inactive Account Manager. It lets you choose a period of inactivity after which Google notifies the trusted contacts you name, up to 10 of them, and shares the data types you selected with each; Google checks signals such as recent sign-ins before it treats the account as inactive, and it verifies each trusted contact by phone so that only that person can download the data¹. Include Drive in the data you share and name the same person you shared the folder with in step 2. Our guide on Apple Legacy Contact and Google Inactive Account Manager covers the setup screens and what Google will and will not release.

If your folder is in Dropbox, there is no equivalent switch there: Dropbox tells families to look for the Dropbox folder on the person's own computer first, and otherwise to open a support ticket with documentation that the person has died and that the requester has a legal right to the files, with no guarantee of access³. For anything kept in Dropbox, step 2 and step 4 carry the weight.

Step 4. Print the Start here page and record where it is

The first page of your guide is the Start here page: the first and backup contact, where the original will or main papers are, who can retrieve them and the one home or care task that cannot wait. Print it and put it where the people in your house would look first, such as a kitchen drawer or the folder with the household bills, then record that place in the walkthrough. This is the copy that works when the power is out, the phone is locked and nobody remembers a password. Our guide on where to keep important documents has more on choosing a spot the right people can reach.

What the handoff record looks like

The last page of your generated guide is the handoff record. It lists the four confirmations with the date each was recorded: the revision saved to your storage, the name and relationship of the person the folder is shared with, the inactive-account option, and where the printed Start here page is kept. It carries a line that these are the owner's recorded confirmations, not a check of the provider's permissions or proof that another person can open the folder. Your family can read that page and know exactly what was set up and when.

Keeping it current

Revisit the handoff step when the person you shared with changes or when you move house. Changing an answer in the walkthrough does not undo a share, but it does mean a new revision of the guide exists, so confirm the new copy in step 1 and, if you keep a printed Start here page, print the new one.

What if your guide lives in iCloud or OneDrive instead of Google Drive or Dropbox?

Your folder is prepared in Google Drive because that is where the walkthrough builds it, but many people also keep documents, or their whole digital life, in Apple's iCloud or Microsoft's OneDrive. The four handoff steps still apply wherever your copies live; only the mechanics of steps 2 and 3 change. The table below compares what each of the four major storage providers offers a family after an owner's death.

If any of your documents live in iCloud, set up Apple's Legacy Contact alongside the Google steps above, since it is the only one of the four besides Google with a built-in option; our Apple Legacy Contact and Google Inactive Account Manager guide walks through the setup screens for both. For anything kept only in OneDrive, there is no advance option to turn on, so step 2 (sharing the folder with a named person) and step 4 (the printed Start here page) carry all the weight, the same as with Dropbox. These advance tools also work faster than the law: under the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, adopted by most states, an executor with letters testamentary can ask a custodian to disclose an account, but that legal request takes time and does not release private communications unless the deceased already consented in advance through a tool like these or in a will⁸. Our digital legacy checklist and documents and access pages cover the wider picture of accounts and files beyond this folder itself.

When to get professional help

If your family will need to act as your executor or as your agent under a power of attorney, an estate attorney can confirm what legal authority a shared folder does or does not provide in your state, since being able to open a folder is not the same as having the legal right to use what is inside it. If a provider refuses to release an account after a death and there is no advance permission on file, an attorney can advise on a request under your state's version of the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act⁸.