Google Workspace is extremely useful. It can do almost everything the other workspace platforms can do, in some ways it’s even better – and, it’s free!
But there are so many options and settings and possibilities, it can quickly get overwhelming. There’s a lot to know, and few of us have had the opportunity to learn about it formally.
Give yourself the chance to learn how to use it with confidence. Here are three steps to getting started:
- Open this link and bookmark it somewhere you will see it every day, ideally your bookmarks bar: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/recent
This shows you all the documents, regardless of format, that you have used (opened/uploaded etc) most recently. If you can’t find something you were working on (for example) yesterday, it will be here, no matter who owns it or where they stored it.
Most of what you use regularly will show up here, so it’s a good place to start your day.
- To keep track of important documents you know you will use a lot: beside the file name, you will see a star. Click that to turn it yellow. All of your starred documents will be in the “starred” section of your home screen. As it’s so easy to add and remove stars, get in the habit of using this section to keep track of things you use a lot, and removing stars from things once you’re done with them.
- Think about your future self (or other team members, current or future) when you’re creating new documents. How will you look for it? Where will you expect to find it? What search terms will you use? Are there related documents that will be used with it? Consider this when you are deciding (a) where the new file will be stored, and (b) what the name of it will be.