Documents

What is Google Suite for Education

Google Suite for Education (formerly “Google Docs”) is a web-based office suite and documents system, consisting of several applications:

• Drive is an online storage space for Google Documents, images, PDFs, and other files
• Docs is a web-based word processor like Apple Pages or Microsoft Word
• Sheets is a web-based spreadsheet like Apple Numbers or Microsoft Excel
• Slides is a web-based presentation application like Apple Keynote or Microsoft PowerPoint
• Calendar is an online calendar
• Contacts is an online contacts manager
• Forms is a method of collecting information (like a survey) from a group of people
• Sites allows you to create your own website

Google Suite provides all of this functionality through a web browser, so you can access all of this data and edit the documents from just about anywhere from any device.

Google Suite also provides sharing and collaborative features; for example you can share Google documents with other people, and multiple users can edit documents at the same time.

Can I convert my existing documents to Google's format

Yes.

You can convert your Microsoft Office documents to Google's format by simply dragging them into Google Drive. Read this article to learn how to set your Google Drive File Conversion Settings to enable this feature.

You can convert your Apple iWork documents to Google's format by converting them to Microsoft Office and then dragging the Microsoft Office formatted documents into Google Drive. We will be providing you a tool to convert these documents using drag and drop.

Do I need to convert my PDF documents? If no, should I upload those to Drive too?

No, you don't need to convert PDF documents, but yes, you should upload them to Google Drive. You can keep all of your files in one place and keep the organizational structure you are used to. This will also allow you to access these files from any location and any device that has access to Google.

How can I learn how to use Google Suite applications?

See the training page linked above.