Vault Drive export using Search Term "in:trash AND owner:me". owner:me behaviour correct?

Question

We have found a strange edge case and I would like some advice as to how "owner:me" works with the Vault API.

Vault retention is turned on.

User [email protected] has had a lot of drive files and he deleted them 6 months ago. The user was then renamed to [email protected] 2 months ago.

When we try to Search or Export using the Account [email protected] and Search Term "in:trash". The deleted files that belong to this user via [email protected] are not returned. Only any files that [email protected] owned.

However, if we Search or Export using the Account [email protected] and Search Term "in:trash AND owner:me". All of the deleted files that belong to this user are returned.

Is this a valid use of the "owner:me" search operator? It appears to work, but should it? I cant find this documented anywhere.

I was led to believe that owner:me was connected with the currently logged in session. Does providing the Account in the Search act like the session?

Thanks

Matt

Answer 1

• The Vault documentation advises to use the full email address when using the owner: Drive search operator. See this Help Center article for more information. Quoting:

Note: Enter the account as the complete email address, such as [email protected] or [email protected].

• The owner:me operator is a shorthand reused throughout several Google services (including UIs and APIs) and it's indeed, contextually, points to the current active session user.

• I can only speculate that when you use owner:me on Vault Drive search, it may reference the internal ID for the current session user (instead of the email address). Then this would explain why both [email protected] and [email protected] owned files were returned, since the internal reference for those email addresses should be the same. But again, this is purely speculation since I wasn't able to find any documentation that backs up this theory.

My recommendation would be to reach out to Workspace support (Since Vault is a Workspace only service) and confirm if this was intended.

I hope this info helps, cheers!