“Opportunities? They are all around us. . . There is power lying latent everywhere waiting for the observant eye to discover it.“ Orison Swett Marden
I may be the very last person to learn about this wonderful program called “Google Drive.” However, assuming that there are some Tips readers who have also never heard of it, let me tell you all about it!
Quoting from their webpages:
Google Drive is a free service that lets you store all your electronic files, including documents, photos, videos and Google Docs online, and access them anywhere- on the web, on your hard drive, or on your mobile device.
It is available for: PC and Mac, Chrome OS, iPhone and iPad, and Android devices.
You can change a file on the web, on your computer, or on your mobile device and it updates on every device where you’ve installed Google Drive. Every time your device has Internet access, it checks in with Google Drive. This way, your files and folders are always up to date- because if you change something on one device, it changes everywhere.
You can compose in Google Drive and it backs up as you write! [What a terrific safety net for those of us who have spent hours creating documents and then, through our own error or a computer glitch, lost the entire thing!]
You don’t need email attachments anymore. You can share your file, folder or Google Doc from any device. And you choose exactly who can view, edit or comment on your files.
You can collaborate to create new documents, spreadsheets and presentations instantly. You can work together at the same time, on the same document, and see changes as they appear.
Your files are always available at drive.google.com, but you can also get them straight from your computer, smartphone and tablet. You can even get to your files after you go offline.
Google Drive tracks every change you make, so when you hit the save button, a new revision is saved. You can look back as far as 30 days automatically or choose a revision to save for good.
You can also get to your files faster, searching for content by keyword and filtering by file type, owner and more. It can even recognize objects in images and text in scanned documents.
You can open over 30 file types right in your browser- including HD video, Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, even if you don’t have the program installed on your computer.
Google Drive provides 5 GB of space for free. More storage space (up to 16 TB!!!) is available for a fee (starting at 25 GB for $2.49/month, and 100 GB for $4.99).
This is a particularly opportune time for me to learn about this program, since I will be leaving soon to conduct training in Amman, Jordan from January 30-February 15th. (More on this later).
I hope you found this information as exciting as I did!
Post Script: Okay, now that I’ve touted the program, I thought I’d try it out for myself. What I discovered is that it does not automatically sync revisions if you are on a Mac. The buzz on the web indicates that this is not just due to my user error- other Mac users have the very same difficulty.
If you use Google Drive and are on a PC, please let me know if you are able to automatically sync your documents using Google Drive.
And, if you are on a Mac and have figured out how to make your revisions sync, please tell me your secret!
May your learning be sweet.
Deborah
