File Cabinet Pages

Create a file cabinet page

A File Cabinet page type allows you to upload and manage documents from your hard drive onto your site and organize them into folders. This can be used to organize common documents in one place.

One useful application for the file cabinet page is to create a repository of documents for other students or teachers. If you wanted to have file cabinets for different groups of people to access (i.e. a file cabinet for teachers, a file cabinet for students), you could create separate Sites (a 'teachers only' site and a 'students only' site) where you invite those groups to view or collaborate. This way, only the group that has access to the site will have access to your file cabinet and your files.

We will walk through how to create a page and share files with students and teachers using the file cabinet page type.

You can create as many file cabinet pages as you like within your site. That means that in addition to having folders in your file cabinets, you could also have separate pages for different purposes - a file cabinet page for one class's resources, and a separate file cabinet page for another.

To create a new file cabinet page, follow these steps:

    1. In your site, make sure you are not editing a page (if you see the Save and Cancel button, you are in editing mode). If in editing mode, click Save or Cancel to exit.
    2. Click the New page button.
    1. Click the 'File cabinet' page type.
    1. Type the name of your file cabinet page.
    2. Choose a location for your page. (As page under Home- or a child to another page)
    3. Click Create page.

On the page you've created, you have the option to add in content above the 'file cabinet.' This can be an area where you explain the purpose of this file cabinet. You can edit this section as you would a standard web page, including adding gadgets and rich media.

Attach files to a file cabinet

You can attach any type of file to a file cabinet page. Please note: The maximum attachment size is 20 mb for a file.

Once you have created you can start adding files in either 'edit' mode or in 'view' mode. You can tell if you are in edit mode if there are 'Save' or 'Cancel' buttons in the top right corner. You are in view mode if there are 'New page' 'Edit page' and 'More' buttons in the top right corner.

To add a file to a file cabinet page, follow these steps:

    1. Click the Add file button.
    1. If your document is on your computer, click the Choose file button to locate it on your hard drive. If it is a file available on the Internet, paste the link into the box beneath the option 'the web (Paste in URL)'.
    2. If you select a document from your computer, the file name will be the same as the original file. For the URL option, you will also be able to enter in what you want the file name to be with the 'text you want to display' box.
    3. Enter in a description of the file that visitors to your page will see.
    1. Click the Upload button.
    2. Your file will be added to the file cabinet.
    3. To add more files, click the Add file button.
    4. If you were in edit mode and are done editing the page, you can click the Save button in the top right corner.

Organize files with folders

You can organize the files in your file cabinet by using folders. Once you upload a file to your file cabinet, you can move it to a folder.

Please note: folders in Google Sites will automatically remain 'open' so you can see all the files. At this time it is not possible to 'collapse' the folders to see only the folder name and not the files.

Like adding a file, you can create a new folder in either 'edit' mode or in 'view' mode.

To create a new folder, follow these steps:

    1. Click the Move to button.
    2. Select New folder from the drop down.
    1. Enter name for folder and click Save.

The folder will now appear in your file cabinet.

To move files to a folder, follow these steps:

    1. Click the check box next to the file(s) name that you would like to move. To select multiple files, select multiple check boxes.
    2. Click the Move to button.
    3. Select the folder name from the drop down, or if you would like to move them to a new folder, click New folder and save the new folder name.

Your files will now appear underneath the folder name.

If you would like to remove a folder, all files inside of that folder will be deleted. If you would like to just delete a folder, move the files to a different folder first (by following the steps on how to move files to a folder).

To remove a folder, follow these steps:

    1. Click the Remove link next to the folder name.
    1. Google Sites will confirm you want to delete the folder and all files inside it. Click Ok.

Your folder will now be removed from your file cabinet.

View files in a file cabinet page

To download or view the files, just click on the file name link. This will either show the file (if it is an image) or download it to your computer.