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Tips for Google Drive

October 15

2015

Google Drive Training

Tips to expand your sharing and collaboration capabilities


©2014 Boost eLearning

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Tips for Google Drive

Learn tips to improve your sharing and collaboration capabilities.

Table of Contents

Tip: Use Discussions to easily communicate and collaborate on a document ................ 3

Tip: Manage your Comments .......................................................................................... 4

Tip: Set Discussion notification settings .......................................................................... 4

Tip: Publish and Embed Google Documents ................................................................... 5

Tip: Publish and Embed Google Presentations ............................................................... 6

Tip: Publish Google Spreadsheets .................................................................................. 7

Tip: Publish and Embed Google Drawings ...................................................................... 8

Tip: Embed a Chart ......................................................................................................... 9

Tip: Create a Form from a Spreadsheet ........................................................................ 10

Tip: Add a progress bar to a multi-page Form ............................................................... 11

Tip: Add data validation to a Form ................................................................................ 11

Tip: Print Google Forms ................................................................................................ 13

Tip: Use Keyboad Shortcuts .......................................................................................... 14

Tip: Use the Research Tool ........................................................................................... 14

Tip: Use named and protected ranges .......................................................................... 15

Tip: Insert special characters by drawing them ............................................................. 16

Tip: Launch desktop applications from Google Drive in Chrome ................................... 17

Tip: Type with your voice ............................................................................................... 18



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Tip: Use Discussions to easily communicate and collaborate on a document

Discussions allow you to leave a comment on a specific text for comment at a later date. There are several different features to use with Discussions

Looks like:

Enter a + sign in front of an email address and it will send the comment the person‟s email inbox

Click „Reply‟ to a notification and enter in text and the text will appear in the document

Click „Edit‟ to edit your comment

Click „Delete‟ to delete your comment

Click „Resolve‟ to resolve the conversation



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Tip: Manage your Comments

Use the Comments tab to edit, delete, and more for all of your comments

Looks like:

Tip: Set Discussion notification settings

Tailor your Comment notifications so you get the updates you want.

Looks like:

Click „Comments‟. Then use the features to manage your comments

Click the small down arrow to manage your comments

First click „Comments‟ then „Notification settings‟. Then select which actions you wish to receive notifications for.



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Tip: Publish and Embed Google Documents

Publishing and embedding are two of the most common ways of sharing your documents. Publishing a document will place the document on its own webpage. You can then provide a link to the published document. All changes that you continue to make on the document can be updated in this „Published‟ document. To embed a document, you will place a piece of code called “html” into a webpage.

Looks like:

First click „File‟, then „Publish to the Web‟

Then, click „Start publishing‟. Keep in mind, publishing a doc does not affect its visibility option. This means, if the doc is private to you only-only you will be able to see this published doc. If the doc‟s visibility option is only to people within your organization, then only people within your organization will be able to view the published doc.

Every time you publish a document, you‟ll be asked to confirm that you want to publish this document.

Copy the link, then send it to people, or create a hyper link (see lesson 4) so people can view the document.

Copy and paste this Embed code into a webpage. Be sure that you are using the HTML view of the webpage when you insert the code.



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Tip: Publish and Embed Google Presentations

Publishing and embedding are two of the most common ways of sharing your documents. Publishing a document will place the document on its own webpage. You can then provide a link to the published document. All changes that you continue to make on the document can be updated in this „Published‟ presentation. To embed a document, you will place a piece of code called “html” into a webpage.

Looks like:

Click „File‟ then click „Publish to the Web‟

If you want, you can require that the viewer must sign in with their organizations Google Apps account for better security.


Copy and paste this Embed code into a webpage.

Select the Presentation size that you will be using.

Be sure that you are using the HTML view of the webpage when you insert the code.



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Tip: Publish Google Spreadsheets

Publishing is one of the most common ways of sharing your documents. Publishing a document will place the document on its own webpage. You can then provide a link to the published document. All changes that you continue to make on the document can be updated in this „Published‟ spreadsheet. Currently, embedding is not available for Google Spreadsheets. You can, however, embed a Chart, presented later in the Tips for Google Docs.

Looks like:

Click „File‟ then „Publish to the web‟.

Click „Start publishing‟. Then confirm that people can view All sheets, or select specific sheets to publish.

If you want, you can require that the viewer must sign in with their organization‟s Google Apps.




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Tip: Publish and Embed Google Drawings

Publishing and embedding are two of the most common ways of sharing your documents. Publishing a document will place the document on its own webpage. You can then provide a link to the published document. All changes that you continue to make on the document can be updated in this „Published‟ drawing. To embed a drawing, you will place a piece of code called “html” into a webpage.

Looks like:

Click „File‟, then „Publish to the Web‟

Select if users need to sign in with their Google Account, click „Start publishing‟

Select the link or copy and paste this Embed code into a webpage. Be sure that you are using the HTML view of the webpage when you insert the code. Select the correct image size



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Tip: Embed a Chart To embed a chart, you will place a piece of code called “html” into a webpage. This is an efficient way to share data that was collected from a spreadsheet.

Looks like:

Once a chart is inserted into your spreadsheet, click the title of the chart (in this example it is „chart 1‟) then click „Publish chart‟.

Copy and paste this Embed code into a webpage. Be sure that you are using the HTML view of the webpage when you insert the code. When finished, click „Done‟.



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Tip: Create a Form from a Spreadsheet

If you started with a Spreadsheet only to realize that you really needed a Form, don‟t worry. Google Forms and Google Spreadsheet, while listed as separate document types, are really part of a whole: collecting and analyzing data.

Looks like:

Click „Form‟ then „Create a form.

The titles of the Spreadsheet now become the text entry fields. You can now edit a form with all the skills developed in lesson 8.



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Tip: Add a progress bar to a multi-page Form

Add a progress bar to your Google Forms so that respondents know how far along they are in completing the form, such as with surveys and quizzes.

Note: the progress bar is based on which page the respondent is viewing, not the number of questions answered on a page. Therefore, you can better leverage the progress bar option when making multi-page forms.

Looks like:

Tip: Add data validation to a Form

Ensure respondents provide the correct type of data in your forms, be it an email address, a minimum number of selected checkbox answers, a zip code, or more. Google Forms displays a customizable warning message when the wrong data is entered for these questions.

Looks like:

Question type Data type Examples

Text Number, Text, Regular expression

Range of numbers, email address, URL

Paragraph text Text, Regular expression

Character count

Checkboxes Number of answers At most 3

To add a progress bar, check the “Show progress bar” option in the Form Settings tab.

The percentage completed is based on which page is being viewed out of the total pages in the form. The number of pages in a form is usually only seen by the form editor while editing a form.

Page numbers visible in form editing mode.

Percentage of pages completed visible in live forms.



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Step 3 Click the check box to activate data

validation.

Step 4 Select the appropriate settings.

Step 1 Select one of the question types that

offers data validation. (Text, Paragraph text, or Checkboxes)

Step 2 Click the Data validation option to

display the settings.



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Tip: Print Google Forms

To collect data offline, print paper copies of your Google Forms in a fillable format using the print button.

Looks like:

Online Form

Printed Form

Step 1

From the form editor, click the „Print‟ button (or click „File‟ and then „Print‟).

Step 2 Customize your print settings, then click „Print‟.



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Tip: Use Keyboad Shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts are available from every Google Docs page. Use the reference to speed up your use of Google Docs.

Looks like:

Tip: Use the Research Tool

Use the Research tool within Google Documents to easily conduct research and add images to your Google Documents.

Looks like:

From any type of Google Docs page, click „Help‟ then click „Keyboard shortcuts‟. This will open a page with the keyboard shortcuts that are available for that document type.

First click „Tools‟ then „Research‟.

Use the tools to insert images, look up information, quotes, and insert graphics into your documents.

Use the research tool to easily improve the quality of your documents.



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Tip: Use named and protected ranges

If you are sharing a spreadsheet with many people, you may want to protect specific ranges from being visible or modified.

Looks like:

Step 1

When editing a spreadsheet, select ranges you‟d like to protect.

Click „Data‟, then click „Named and protected ranges‟.

Step 2

Enter in a name and select „protect‟.

Then click „Done‟.

Step 3

This will open the sharing settings. Select the other people you‟d like to be able to view or edit this range.

Click „Save changes‟ when done.

Step 4

Click „Edit‟, then select „Modify permissions‟ to change the permissions.



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Tip: Insert special characters by drawing them

There are hundreds of symbols available to help you add graphical elements like arrows, shapes, and non-Latin characters into Google Docs, Slides, and Drawings. To make it easy to find the right character, use keywords, or the free form input.

Step 1

Click the „Insert‟ menu, and select „Special characters…‟. In Slides and Drawings, your cursor must be in a text box.

Step 2

Search for a character using keywords, or by clicking and drawing the character inside the free form box.

Step 3

Hover over a character to view it. Or click it to insert.



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Tip: Launch desktop applications from Google Drive in Chrome

You can launch desktop applications installed on your computer when you open non-Google files stored on Google Drive. Make your edits in the application, then save back changes to Google Drive which will sync across all your devices and other collaborators automatically.

Make sure you are using…

the new Google Drive

the latest version of Google Drive for Mac/PC

Step 1

Open Google Drive

Step 2

Right-click a file. You can also single-click the file and click the Menu button .

Step 3

Hover over „Open with‟ in the menu.

Step 4

Choose an app to open the file with.

To launch desktop applications

Click the gear icon, then select „Download Drive‟.

Follow the instructions for installing Google Drive to your Mac/PC.

To download the latest version of Google Drive for Mac/PC



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Tip: Type with your voice

For an easy way to put words on a page, you can type with your voice in a document. This feature may only be available in Chrome browsers.

Make sure that you are using…

a working microphone (either built in to your device or connected externally)

the Chrome browser

Correct mistakes while voice typing

Step 1

Open a Google document

Step 2 Click the Tools menu > Voice typing.

Step 3

A pop-up microphone box will appear. When you are ready to speak your text, click the microphone or press Ctrl + Shift + S (Cmd + Shift + S on a Mac) on your keyboard.

Step 4

Speak your text clearly, at a normal volume and pace. See below for more information on using punctuation.

Step 5

When you're finished, click the microphone again.

If you make a mistake while you're typing with your voice, you can move you cursor to the mistake and fix it without turning the microphone off.

After correcting the mistake, make sure to move the cursor back to where you want to continue voice typing.

You can also right-click words underlined in grey to see a list of suggestions.

Make corrections

When you are speaking text in a document, there are several phrases you can use to add punctuation to your text:

Use punctuation with voice typing

"Period"

"Comma"

"Exclamation point"

"Question mark"

"New line"

"New paragraph"