Y U No Try Google Drive (Google Docs)

Most people don’t realize how much it’s important to keep a backup of their important files, photos, documents,etc… until they loose it by system crashes or data corruptions. You don’t need to worry about this anymore. Now you can keep those stuff synced in the cloud. Even if your local machine got into fire (shouldn’t happen to anyone) your stuff is still in a safe place.

There are many free cloud storage systems out there. Such as Dropbox. Still I’m using it to upload my precious photos. But as always Google has something different, Google recently introduced its cloud storage with 5GB of free capacity. They named it Google Drive. It’s not only to upload and keep your files safe. As I mentioned earlier (something different) you can create Documents and Spreadsheets online inside Google Drive. So you can edit and share with other Gmail users by only using a web browser.

Today internet is available in everywhere, so there’s no need to worry about keeping things online. Or even you can access it using your mobile phones :). Which provides more portability than MS Office or Open-Office.

In this guide I’ll walk you through some of the basic stuff to get start using Google Drive.

Accessing Google Drive

Go to drive.google.com and login with your regular Gmail account and it’ll get you to the Google Drive.

Organizing with folder

Assume it as a hard drive in your ‘My Computer’ but it’s stored in the cloud. You can create folders by clicking the CREATE button and select Folder. Give a name for the new folder and hit Create . Then newly created folder will appear under My Drive.

[lbfenix img=”http://i1134.photobucket.com/albums/m608/irfadraz/Google%20Drive/Create_Folder.png”][/lbfenix]

Uploading files

First select a folder that you’ve already created and click the upload icon next to CREATE button. If you upload Word or Excel documents you can convert it to Google document format and you’ll be able to edit the documents online.

[lbfenix img=”http://i1134.photobucket.com/albums/m608/irfadraz/Google%20Drive/Upload.png”][/lbfenix]

Note: Uploading entire folder only supported in Google Chrome.

Creating and editing Documents and Spreadsheets

To create a document, click the CREATE button and select the document type you want create. And you can start editing. Anything you edit will be saved automatically. So you can access it later.

[lbfenix img=”http://i1134.photobucket.com/albums/m608/irfadraz/Google%20Drive/Create_Document.png”][/lbfenix]
[lbfenix img=”http://i1134.photobucket.com/albums/m608/irfadraz/Google%20Drive/Document.png”][/lbfenix]

Sharing files and documents

Sharing documents in Drive is dead simple. Just open a document, on the right top click the Share button. In the popup window enter the Email (Gmail) addres under the Add people. And next to it you can give access permissions. Select appropriate permission and click Save & Share. and Select Done.

[lbfenix img=”http://i1134.photobucket.com/albums/m608/irfadraz/Google%20Drive/Share.png”][/lbfenix]
[lbfenix img=”http://i1134.photobucket.com/albums/m608/irfadraz/Google%20Drive/Add_People.png”][/lbfenix]

It’s more fun to edit a shared doc at the same time with collaborators. And you can see what they are exactly doing in the document. Isn’t that cool. Why not give it a try.

There are lot more in Google Drive. You’ll probably figure it out once you start using it.