Drive
Google Drive is a suite of web based collaboration and productivity tools:
- Store, share, collaborate and publish on the web.
- Drive documents auto save every few seconds so work is never lost.
- All collaborators can work together at the same time on the same document
- Access all your work from any computer or mobile device with a web browser*. No need to carry a flash drive again.
- Unlimited Storage for all file types (Office, AutoCAD, Photoshop, movies, video, etc.)
- 75% of colleges and universities, and over five million businesses use Google apps.
- Privacy and Security
Interactive Tour EDU Training Center Apps Training Center Google Drive Basics Cheat Sheet Google Drive Student/Teacher Workflow
With Drive you can create Documents, Presentations, Spreadsheets, Forms, Drawings, and more, each explained in a sub-tab. Below some common features are described.
Converting Legacy Office Files
Click Upload on the top menu bar. (It is the red button next to the create button just mentioned before!)
Click Choose File or Browse, select the document, and click Open. The file can be an .HTML, .DOC, .DOCX, .RTF, .ODT, or .SXW file.
Choose a name for the file if you want the file name to be different from the current file name.
Click Upload File.
or, watch this tutorial video explaining this process.
Inserting Objects in to Documents, Presentation & Spreadsheets
Click Insert to display the menu. You can insert images, drawings, equations, links, tables, comments, footnotes, special characters, horizontal lines, page breaks, tables of contents, bookmarks, or headers and footers from this menu.
Click Drawing to open the drawing tool box.
When you are done drawing, click Save & Close in the top right corner to close the drawing tool box and insert it into your document. The drawing will be inserted at your cursor location.
Sharing a Document & Comments Tool
To share, click Share in the upper right hand corner. (brutally obvious, I know)
Enter the email address of those to which you’d like to share with. after each email, select can view, can edit, or can comment.
You have the option to send an email message at this time with the document you are sharing.
Click Share & Save. The contacts added will receive an email with the document shared. It will also appear in their Documents home page.
Downloading from Drive to MS Office, PDF, etc.
Downloading a Google Document, Spreadsheet or Presentation to a MS Office file or PDF is easy!
With the Google Doc open, click on "File", then "Download as"
You will be prompted to choose between a number of formats... select the option best suited.
The file will download to your download bar (bottom of your browser if in Chrome) where you can open it and do with it as you wish.