Today, we are going to be talking about all of the ways that you can organize your Google Drive. I know that personally my Google Drive can sometimes get a little out of control so having a way to keep everything organized is a must. I am going to share some of the ways that I keep my Drive organized. Some are probably obvious, some might not be so much. Hopefully after this episode, you are able to find some ways to help tame your out of control Drive.
One way you can organize your drive is by starring items in your Drive. You can star either a folder or a document in your Drive. You might want to do this with important folders or documents. To star a document or folder, simply right-click on the folder/document and choose “Add to Starred”. After you have starred a document or folder, you can filter your Drive by clicking on the Starred label on the left-hand side. Doing this will only show you documents or folders you have starred.
One way that you can organize your Drive is by creating folders. This I know is fairly obvious. Did you know you can change the color of your folder? To do this, all you have to do is right-click on a folder, choose change color, and pick the color you want that folder to be. Google provides you with 24 different color choices. I try to coordinate the folder color with the same color I use in my calendar. For example, in my calendar, I color meeting events blue. In my Drive, my meetings folder is also blue. For me, it just helps to try to keep things consistent.
Another way you can organize your Google Drive is through the way in which you name your folders. Obviously, you can organize your folders in alphabetical order but maybe there is a folder that begins with a G but you want it at the top of your folder list. A trick that I use is I add either numbers or emojis at the beginning of the name of my folder. Doing this puts that folder right at the top of your list of folders. For example, I have an ed tech folder I go into frequently. Instead of having to scroll to the Es in my list of folders, I added a zero to the front and now it is right at the top of my list of folders. I also have an ed tech video folder I get into frequently so I added a TV emoji to the front of the name of that folder and it is now at the top of my list of folders. Not only does this add a new way to organize your folders but they also look cool too.
So a feature that Google just added recently was adding the priority section. You will see the priority section right above the My Drive label on the left side of your drive. In the priority section, you can create different workspaces. To create a workspace, simply click on Priority. From there you will see the section labeled workspaces. Click on the create button, give your workspace a name, and then click create. After you have created a workspace, you can click on the workspace to add files to that workspace. You can add up to 25 files to a workspace. This is great for organizing files you need for projects you are working on. Currently, I am gathering evidence for my Google Certified Trainer submission. So what I did was I created a Google Certified Trainer workspace and have been adding files to that workspace.
Finally, a way you can organize your drive by creating a shared drive. Shared drives were previously called Team Drives. This is a great way to organize files that you are sharing with others, especially when you are working on a project together. By creating a shared drive and inviting other people to that drive, everyone can contribute and all the files that you are working on are in one central location. Depending on the roles you set up, someone in a shared drive could be either a Manager, content manager, contributor, commenter, or viewer. A manager manages content, members, and settings. A content manager ca add, edit, move, and delete files. A contributor can add and edit files. A commenter can comment on files, and a view can only view files in a shared drive. One way to add a file to a shared drive, you can simply drag a file from my drive to a shared drive. Another way to move a file to a shared drive is you can click on a file and then you will see the vertical ellipses. Click on that, choose move to and choose the shared drive. You can also create files right within the shared drive. Just note that once you move a file from your drive to a shared drive, it takes it out of your drive so if you want to keep a copy of that document, make sure to make a copy of it first before moving it to a shared drive.