The rise of the cloud has driven some dynamic shifts in how we create, access, share, and edit files. If there’s a leader in this space, it’s Google Drive.
If you own a small business, learning how to maximize all the features available through Google Drive can increase your productivity and enhance output.
Make Google Drive Work for You
Take a moment and make a mental list of all the different tools, applications, and software solutions that you use on a daily basis. We’ll wait….
Chances are, you included Google Drive―or one of the Google Drive products―on your list. Whether it’s Google Docs, Google Sheets, or Google Slides, your company likely depends on a combination of these solutions to perform daily tasks.
But are you getting the most out of them? Like any suite of tools, you could be taking advantage of numerous hacks, shortcuts, and tricks to improve how you use Google Drive … if you’re aware of them.
Here are a few of our favorites:
1. Try These Keyboard Shortcuts
The greatest time savings come from the actions you perform most often (and not necessarily the largest or most weighty tasks). Saving 10 seconds on an action you have to perform 20 times a day could save you hours each month.
With that in mind, here are some keyboard shortcuts you can use to streamline how you use Google Drive:
· Shift + t = Create a new document
· Shift + p = Create a new presentation
· Shift + s = Create a new spreadsheet
These are just three of the simple ones. Here’s a comprehensive list of a lot more potential shortcuts. (Warning: You can really go down a rabbit hole trying to learn all of these. Instead, try to pick out the ones that are most likely going to enhance your productivity.)
2. Use Google Drive to Share Large Files
Have you ever been frustrated by the fact that Gmail only lets you send email attachments up to 25MB in size? Even after zipping/compressing on your computer, you might have a file that’s still too big. Google Drive to the rescue!
Google Drive allows you to store files up to 15GB in a single folder. Thus, you can send the folder link to the intended party via email and they can access or download it via that link. Easy peasy!
3. Use Tools That Work With Google Drive
If you use an intranet for your small business, make sure you’ve got one that actually works with Google Drive. A lot of platforms claim they “integrate” with Google Drive, but this basically means they have a button inside the intranet which you can click in order to launch Google Drive in a separate browser.
What you want is a platform that actually allows users to edit files directly inside the platform. Happeo is the only modern intranet solution that permits users to do this.
4. Use the Save to Google Drive Extension
If you aren’t using the Save to Google Drive Chrome extension already, you’re missing out! This extension allows you to save web content directly to your Drive as you’re browsing,
That includes images, screen shots, links, and even video content. It’s one of these most productive extensions in the entire Chrome Web Store.
5. Open PDFs to Pull Text
Did you know that Google Drive has a feature that allows you to open a PDF and extract the text from it? It’s called automatic optical character recognition. All you have to do is open the file with Google Docs and you’re ready to go!
6. Customize How Items are Displayed
We all have preferences with regard to how we organize and display files. Fortunately, Google lets you change back and forth from “list view” to “grid view.” You can also optimize how files are listed (last modified, last opened, name, etc.).
Getting Better Results With Google Drive
Google Drive is an undeniably powerful platform that boasts an impressive array of features. But in order to get the most out of individual solutions like Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides, you need to optimize how you use them.
We trust this article has provided you with a few practical insights you can implement right away. Best of luck to you and your business!
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