How to Become a Google Drive Power User

Are you one of Google Drive’s one billion active users? Are your files among the more than two trillion documents Drive now stores?

Google Drive is a fantastic resource. But some of its best features are relatively hidden – so we’ve put together a comprehensive infographic to illustrate the best of them and show you how to boost your productivity and become a Google Drive power user.

One example of a quick trick is to watch your uploaded videos through Google Drive. This can save a lot of time (and storage space) when collaborating on a moving image project. You just need to double-click the uploaded video file to bring it up in a YouTube-style player.

Or if you’re looking to spruce up your writing you can find over 800 fonts in Google Docs. Either create a doc, or upload an MS-Word doc to Drive and right-click > Open with Google Docs. You’ll find the font menu midway along the toolbar and just click ‘More fonts…’ in the dropdown.

And the transition from paper to digital becomes easy if you pair Drive with your Android phone. No more hefty scanning machines and labored file management. Now you can simply install Drive on your android phone, tap the blue ‘plus’ symbol to reveal the option to scan, take a photo of your paper document, and save it as a pdf.

Everybody loves pdfs. And Google Drive will even allow you to search your scanned pdfs for the text you seek.

Google Drive user, this is just the beginning! Have a look through our new visual guide to Google Drive’s hidden features to see what works for you.

The power of the Drive is just a secret shortcut away.

Sources

1. Google. Use Google Drive files offline. google.com
2. Google. See what’s changed in a file. google.com
3. Google. Scan files as PDFs with your phone. google.com
4. Moynihan, T. (2014). Google Drive Is Scary-Smart at Searching Your Images. wired.com
5. Google. Store and play video in Google Drive. google.com
6. Google. Convert PDF and photo files to text. google.com
7. Google. How do I add new font styles to Google Drive? google.com
8. Google. Translate Docs into other languages. google.com
9. Google. Type with your voice. google.com
10. Google. Link a chart, table, or slides to Google Docs or Slides. google.com
11. Google. Get instant insights into your data. google.com
12. Google. Protect content in a spreadsheet. google.com
13. Mangold, B. 19 Awesome Things Google Sheets Can Do – Tips & Tricks. lovesdata.com
14. Google. Set up notifications for spreadsheet updates. google.com
15. Google. Use the built-in laser pointer for presentations. google.com
16. Google. Publish files as web pages. google.com
17. Google. Let your audience submit and vote on questions during presentations. google.com
18. Arora, A. (2018). 16 Time-saving Google Slides Tips & Tricks (Even Experts Don’t Know). sketchbubble.com
19. Wodinsky, S. (2018). Google Drive is about to hit 1 billion users. theverge.com