One of the great things about Google Drive is that you can download, share, and collaborate on files with many people. However, once those teams get large or you’re trying to upload big files, you can run into usage limits. Those usage limits can lead to the error that your “Download quota is exceeded”.

There are a few workarounds to avoid this error, which we’ll cover in this article.

How to fix error : Google Drive storage quota has been exceeded

You can still download the file without triggering the “Download quota is exceeded” error. It just requires some extra steps to change the Google Drive account you’re downloading it from to your own.

To do this, you’ll need to save a copy to your Google Drive account first.

1. Make sure you’re already signed into your Google Drive account.

2. Select the link to the shared Google Drive file that you want to download.

3. Save a copy of the file in a Google Drive folder you prefer by selecting File > Make a copy.

4. Browse to the folder where you want to save the copy and select it. Select the Select button to choose it. Then select OK to finish.

This moves the file from the original account it was shared from into your own Google Drive account. Since your Google Drive account is also on Google’s servers, this isn’t technically a file download.

Now that a copy of the original file is on your account, and no one else is downloading it, you can go ahead and download it now to your local computer without any download quota limitations.

How to fix 403 error: User rate limit exceeded

A userRateLimitExceeded error indicates that the per-user limit has been reached. This limit might be the limit from the API console or a limit from the Drive backend. Following is the JSON representation of this error:

{
"error": {
"errors": [
{
"domain": "usageLimits",
"reason": "userRateLimitExceeded",
"message": "User Rate Limit Exceeded"
}
],
"code": 403,
"message": "User Rate Limit Exceeded"
}
}

To fix this error, try any of the following:

• Raise the per-user quota in the Developer Console project. For more information, see Request additional quota.
• If one user is making a lot of requests on behalf of many users of a Google Workspace domain, consider a Service Account with authority delegation (setting the quotaUser parameter).
• Use exponential backoff to retry the request.

How to Fix “Download quota is exceeded” Error if You’re the Owner

If you’re the one hosting the shared file to many people on your Google Drive account, the fix for this error is a bit different.

To do this, just right click on the original file and select Make a copy.

You’ll see a new file appear with “A copy of” in front of the original filename.