Eric Griffith Google Drive Tips You Can't Afford to Miss Google's online office suite and storage service is now the tool of choice for many. Find out why.
Google's online office suite and storage service is now the tool of choice for many. Find out why.
Raise your hand if you remember Writely. A four-person company called Upstartle launched the online-only word processor in August 2005, taking advantage of a then-new browser technology called AJAX. It allowed users to instantly save and retrieve content generated in the browser but stored on the server. And it worked so well that Google bought Upstartle less than a year later.
At the time, a product like Writely was unique (the software didn't come on a CD), but still considered a gamble. Pundit Om Malik said of the purchase, "Convincing the masses that their documents will be safe [online]...may be quite challenging, even if it's FREE!"
Fast forward to today. Google's online office suite of tools has done nothing but grow and improve. Now under the umbrella of Google Drive (formerly Google Docs), you'll find a file management and storage service as well as the various apps, which still get collectively called Google Docs, even by Google. The apps include: a word processor (sometimes simply called Docs: it's Writely, all grown up), spreadsheet (Sheets), presentations (Slides), drawing, and forms.
It's a full suite of tools that now takes on Microsoft's far more mature Office; in fact, Google Drive's very presence in the market arguable drove Microsoft to create its own Office Online versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to work with its OneDrive storage/sync service.
Businesses have the option of using G Suite (formerly Google Apps), a version of Google Drive with all the storage and tools, plus integration of Gmail, Calendar, Sites, and more under their own domain name; the price starts at $5 per user per month and come with 30GB of online storage. Nonprofits and schools can get it free.
Drive—an Editors' Choice and one of our few five-star products—is a serious set of tools for serious (or fun) work, all entirely free. But it pays to know more than just the basics. That's why we've put together these tips for how to get the most out of Google Drive. Share your own advice for fellow Drive-rs in the comments below.
The name of the game with Google Drive documents is "collaboration." It doesn't matter if you're all on desktop PCs or tablets or smartphones, more than one person at a time can work on a document—up to 50 simultaneously. To keep tabs on what your colleagues have done, you can view a revision history via File > See Revision History or by clicking the link next to "Help" on the top menu (it might say "All changes saved in Drive" or "Last edit made by X 10 minutes ago"). A list on the right side will show you who updated the doc and when; click their name to see what they did.
What if you want the revisions to look more like they do when you track changes in a Microsoft Word document? Docs supports a feature called Suggest Edits. Click the Editing button (with the pencil icon) up by the Comments and Share buttons. You'll get a menu that lets you edit, suggest edits (with visible tracked changes), or viewing so you can see the final doc.
There are a lot of documents to keep track of. If you can't remember the name of the one you want, but you can remember who shared it with you, click on Shared with Me in the left menu of Google Drive. You'll get a list of all the documents you share access to. If the list is too long to parse, type the collaborator's name in the search field at the top to narrow down the choices.
To be part of the collaboration, the document has to be shared. The limit is 200 people, but if more than 50 collaborators try to edit a document, the late-comers can only view the changes.
The owner(s) of the document can set who has edit privileges. But to avoid a hassle, you can also just make a document public. Click the "Share" button on the top right > Advanced > and "Change" under "Who has access." Note that public documents are made available to search engines... and Google happens to own one of those, too.
When you do all this document sharing, you might think everyone is equal. Not so. There are four levels of document access. Owners can do anything to the file—even delete it—and invite more collaborators. Editors can of course edit, but only invite more collaborators if the Owner allows it. Viewers get to see what's going on. Commenters can see it, plus leave comments on it. Viewers and Commenters can also make copies of documents, so don't think of them as "secure."
It's nice that Google Drive shows your fellow document collaborators in the upper-right corner as you work. But what if you want to talk to them about something regarding that shared doc? You can launch other windows and IM with a Google Hangout, or even send email—but that's a pain. If you click the little word balloon icon, it creates an instant chat that's just for that document. Like IMs, it comes complete with smileys.
There are a slew of add-ons that can expand the functionality you already get for free in Docs and Sheets. You can find them or activate them by clicking the Add-ons menu when editing a document. Among the best: Avery Label Merge, for importing addresses from Sheets into Docs for mail-merge print jobs; EasyBib for creating bibliographies and citations; Gliffy for inserting diagrams and flowcharts; and Table of Contents for quick creation of a clickable ToC to use for navigation.
Not to be confused with Add-ons, there are also a number of Google Drive apps—entirely new web-based applications you can link to your Google Drive and take advantage of. There's some overlap with the add-ons—you probably don't need the HelloFax app and add-on. But the apps, found in the Chrome Web Store, make it easy to do some extra editing elsewhere. For example, toss images over to PicMonkey or Pixlr Express, convert files to any format with CloudConvert, and sign documents with DocuSign.
Google Drive has a big "New" button on the interface, for creating new files. It's also what you click to go through the steps of uploading a file or folder (left). Skip that part—drag files from Windows Explorer or the macOS Finder right into Google Drive list of file. At the bottom of the browser screen, you'll see cloud with an up arrow to indicate you can let go of the file you're dragging to drop it right into Drive.
Or hit Shift + D for a new Doc, Shift + S for a new Sheet, and Shift + P for a new Slide presentation.
Dropbox is a popular sync service that makes sure when you edit a file in one place, that edited file shows up on every other PC where you have Dropbox installed. Plus you can access the files online or via mobile apps.
Google Drive does exactly the same thing—and it works with any kind of document, not just Docs, Sheets, and Slides files. Best of all, you get that instant access to edit the files with a double-click, as if they're regular offline word processor docs (but the click launches the file in Google Drive in your browser). This requires installing the Drive program that runs constantly in the background of the PC to sync files for you.
Remember, if you sync a lot of files—like space-consuming video and photos—you may need to pay for extra storage through Google. But the cost is low: on top of the 15GB you already get free, the price starts at $1.99 a month for 100GB. Even a terabyte is only $10 a month.
You typically access files stored on Google Drive when your browser is connected to the internet. You can always use Google Drive like Dropbox to have all your files also on your hard drive, but this option puts that function on just one PC: install Google Docs Offline on the Chrome browser, then go to Google Drive settings. Check the box next to "Sync Google Docs, Sheets, Slides & Drawings files to this computer so you can edit offline." Note this only works with Google Chrome.
If you want to work with a file on your smartphone but don't have internet access, set up the file to be available offline ahead of time. Open a file in Docs, Slides, or Sheets, click the three-dot menu at the upper right, and toggle the switch next to "Available Offline." Next time you go online, any changes you've made will sync again with Google Drive.
Evernote is the best repository online for all your stuff. But you can use Google Drive in a similar fashion. There's a Google Chrome extension called Save to Google Drive that acts somewhat like the Evernote Web Clipper, making it a breeze to save almost anything to see online to a folder on Google Drive. There are some caveats, though. You can't really save just the good text parts of a page—you can only save a view of it as a PNG file, the entire HTML source code, or save it as a Google document (which will throw the formatting off). Right-click an image and you can save just that. This extension is a fun option, but for serious saving of info, stick with Evernote or OneNote.
If you use Gmail and Google Drive, you're in luck: you never need to attach a document ever again. That means you'll never run into that 25MB attachment limit—instead you can send up to 10 Gigabytes worth of files. Of course, the files have to be uploaded to Google Drive storage. Insert the files into a Gmail message with a click of the Google Drive triangle icon at the bottom of a message composition screen. If the files are still on your hard drive, the Upload tab makes it easy to drag and drop them for quick upload and insert.
Google has offered a Drive app for iOS and Android for a long time, but the file editing was a mixed bag. Google ultimately moved the editing to completely new apps, one for Docs (iOS, Android), Sheets (iOS, Android) and Slides (iOS , Android ). The Drive app lives on to provide access and viewing of stored files; when you need to edit, it'll shunt you over to one of the other apps.
There are a lot of files in the world, and you can upload any of them to Google Drive for storage. But what about working with them after they're uploaded? Converting a file to Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides format is pretty easy: upload the file, right-click and select "Open with." A sub-menu of choices will appear with options that let you change, for example, a Word doc into a Google Docs format. It'll create a copy, leaving your old file intact.
If you want every item you upload on the desktop—even PDFs—to convert to text you can edit as a Google Doc, you can. In a desktop browser, go to the Settings menu (the gear icon) and check the box next to Convert Uploads. File uploads may take a little longer, but it's worth it. You'll end up with a Google Doc that has the image inserted and editable text below.
One app in the Google Drive collective that doesn't get a lot of attention is Forms, but it's a handy one. Think of it as your own personal SurveyMonkey. You set up a poll, survey, what-have-you, and share it. The data that's collected is inserted into a Sheets spreadsheet file. Forms are just as collaborative to build as any document. Forms support progress bars to show respondents how long they have to go, images, and YouTube videos.
You can typically set a browser to full screen, hiding all the menus and toolbars, by clicking F11. In Google Drive, your apps can also be set to go full screen again, eliminating the app menus and toolbars at the top. Just select the Full Screen option in the view menu. It's a fast way to create a distraction-free writing screen in Docs. To get out of it, hit the Esc key.
When you've got a head of steam on a project and limited screen real estate, the last thing you want to do is leave the page to do a search. The research pane (accessible in Docs only) gets around that, providing a way to search the web for research. Click Tools > Explore (or Ctrl+Alt+Shift+I) to access it. Best of all, it makes it easy to insert a footnote citation in your document that links to the results. Use Ctrl+Shift+Y when your cursor is on a certain word and the pane shows the definition.
Embrace keyboard shortcuts and you'll be a Google Drive god. Except what are they and how do you find them? No matter what Drive app you're in, even in the main Google Drive page, just type Ctrl+/ and the shortcut menu will reveal every keyboard option available.
This one only works if you've got Google Drive installed on Windows. Open Windows Explorer and paste in %APPDATA%/Microsoft/Windows/SendTo, which opens the SendTo folder.
If you're on Windows 10, right-click on Google Drive in the Quick Access section. If you're on Windows 7, open Windows Explorer and search for Google Drive. Then drag that file to the SendTo folder.
Then, whenever you right-click a file in Windows, find the SendTo section and you'll have the option to send it directly to Google Drive.
It's easy to insert a link in a Google Doc. Select the text, click the chain icon or hit Ctrl-K, and a menu pops up where you can paste the URL. But if you don't already have a URL for the link, Google will find one for you, since Google search is built in. It will search first on the term you've highlighted. If that doesn't work, put in different search query—it won't change the text of the document. Once you find a link you like, click it to insert instantly.
Got a document in a foreign language? Upload it to Google Drive, open it (as a Google Doc), click Tools, then Translate Document. You'll get a duplicate doc in your preferred language.
When you copy and paste in Windows or the Mac, you generally get one item stored in the clipboard. With Google Drive, there's a special shared Web Clipboard that holds multiple items. In a Doc, for example, select something, go to Edit > Web Clipboard > Clip Selection to Web Clipboard. Then you can use it in other Docs or Slides or Drawings (it doesn't work in Sheets). Save a bunch of items you need to copy/paste, and then go back into Web Clipboard to Clear All when you're done.
Open up a brand new blank Google Doc file for word processing on the desktop, and if your computer has a microphone, you have the option to do Voice Typing. If it doesn't come up automatically, you'll find it in the tools menu. It puts a microphone icon next to the document—click on it to speak, and what you say appears in the doc. The microphone icon pulses when it hears you.
No one is going to say it's exactly Dragon-speech capable as yet, but Google's done a lot to perfect voice recognition and dictation over the last few years. And this works pretty great. Not only for writing down what you say (including basic punctuation: say "period" when you end a sentence for example) but also for making corrections and formatting changes via voice, and navigating around the document without touching a mouse. The list of supported languages goes far beyond just US English, as well. It will, however, censor your cursing with asterisks—you'll need to retype that bull**** later.
Looking for a specific file or doc in Google Drive? Google's got the search stuff down, so it's usually easy. But if you need to do an advanced search, you can open the options to do so with the down arrow in the search box. From there, you can search on the file type, the owner, if it's starred or trashed, when it was last modified, who it's shared with, and more.
Better yet is the upgrade to use Natural Language Processing when you search Drive. That means you can skip the esoteric search operators and try something like "find my sales meeting minutes from last July."
It helps to keep folders in order, but sometimes you just want your eye drawn to the most used folders by, say, a color choice. Google Drive offers that option, with a rainbow of choices. Right-click any folder and select Change Color to get the menu.
If you use Outlook.com or the Outlook app for iOS or Android, you're not limited to just using Microsoft OneDrive for accessing in-the-cloud files. You can also get them from Dropbox, Box, Facebook, and yes, Google Drive as well.