Google Docs flagged my manuscript and locked me out

What has probably happened

Google may review files in Drive against its program policies and restrict one it judges to break them. The policies allow exceptions for artistic work, but a novel gets no blanket pass. Writers whose books deal with violence, abuse, or sex have reported manuscripts being flagged, and no review of this kind gets every call right.

Read the notice carefully, because two different things get called being locked out. A flagged file stays with its owner, but Google stops it being shared and takes away public access, even for people who have the link, so beta readers or an editor may suddenly be unable to reach it. A disabled Google account is far more serious: sign-in itself fails, and with it Gmail, Drive, and everything else under that address.

What to do now

1. Download a copy first. If you can still open the file, use File › Download › Microsoft Word (.docx), and save a PDF as well. For many files at once, Google Takeout (takeout.google.com) can export the Docs in your Drive in Word format.
2. Request a review. From the owner's account, open the file, click Share, and choose Request a review. Say briefly that the file is a work of fiction you are writing. Google's help says a review typically takes around five days.
3. For a disabled account, appeal from the sign-in page. Sign in from a browser and choose Start Appeal. For some kinds of violation, Google will review a second appeal with more information if the first is denied. Signing in may also offer a download of your data, though not after certain kinds of violation.
4. Keep working somewhere else meanwhile. Open the downloaded copy in any word processor rather than waiting on the original.

One trap for later. Drive for desktop does not put your Google Docs on your disk as documents: each appears as a small shortcut file that opens the browser. A synced Drive folder is not a backup of your writing. Downloading a real DOCX on a schedule is, and so is a copy on an external drive that no company's decision can reach.

In Tabularia

The working copy of a manuscript is kept by the browser on whichever computer or tablet you write with. On the Free plan it is the only copy, and nothing about it is sent to Tabularia's cloud. A Cloud subscription adds backup and sync on top of that local copy rather than replacing it.

Publishing is where Tabularia does apply judgment. Anyone may report a published page, and a person reads every report; a page that breaks the terms stops being served, the author is told why, and the manuscript it came from is not touched. Tabularia can also suspend an account that breaks its terms, as any service can. So the advice above holds here too. An occasional export kept on your own disk is the backup that depends on nobody; with the Cloud plan, a project archive does the same job.