Get More From Your Google Drive

Posted on August 4, 2013
Google Drive is among the best cloud service where you can store and create documents, spreadsheets, presentations. Though, it is not limited to create, store and share documents. Drive provides a platform to use third party apps like Video editing, Diagram creation, Project Management and much more.
Google Drive banner image
Here are some useful tips and applications that will give you more precise control and advantage over Google Drive.

1. Share files from Drive

You can share your files or folders right from your Google Drive folder from your desktop. This is quite handy, say you are chatting with your friend over Skye and you want to share some document with him. You just need to right click the document you want to share from your Google Drive folder on your desktop and hit "Share" button.
How to share files from Google Drive desktop
In the next screen, you'll be asked to for sharing preferences like public, anyone with the link and limited. Once you're done with the sharing preference you can copy the link for the document with your friend you're chatting. Simple, isn't it?

2. Save anything to your Drive with a right-click

Save To Drive is the most powerful Chrome extension allows you to save almost anything from the web page to your Google Drive by just a right click. It offers you to save a complete web page in various formats like image, html, mht, etc. You just need to hit the extension located beside the address bar/omnibox.
Save To Drive Chrome extension
If you just want to save any image from a web page then right-click on the image and hit "Save Image to Google Drive" button. Voila! your image saved to drive.

3. Add Google Drive to Windows "Send To" menu

You can quickly add any documents, files or anything from anywhere to your Google Drive folder by creating a right click menu for Google Drive. Sounds amazing, right?
Add Google Drive to Windows Send To menu
Just 2 easy steps required to create a right-click "Send To" menu on your Windows PC.
  • Right-click Google Drive desktop shortcut and hit "Copy" button
  • Open the following location from the address bar or from the "Run" menu and paste the copied shortcut to the following opened location.
    %APPDATA%/Microsoft/Windows/SendTo
4. Revision History to Restore Old Files

Google Drive stores revision history for all your files. Though, the Drive on desktop stores only latest version of each file. If you want to view or restore a file to a back dated version then you'll need to visit the drive website.
Revision History in Google Drive
Though, previous versions will be deleted automatically when they're older than 30 days or there are more than 100 previous versions of the same file. To override this default setting for some of your critical documents, you can set an option to never delete the older version option form the Manage Revisions panel.

5. Attach files stored in Drive on Gmail

Gmail offers you to attach files stored in Drive right from your mail compose window. Just hover your mouse over the + icon and hit the Drive icon. In the next screen, you'll be prompted to select your drive file to attach!
How to attach files stored in Drive on Gmail

6. Host website on Google Drive

Google Drive later allowed users to host html pages over the Drive. This is really useful for short spanned events like birthday invitations or client demos. You can upload your website folder having html, css, javascript and other media files with relative path to the parent directory. Once you uploaded the website folder you can share the url of your website hosted on Google Drive to the world.

Here is the complete guide on How To Host a Website on Google Drive.

7. Search by person

Sometime you're not able to recall the name of the file but you know who shared it with you? For such cases, enter the person's name who shared the file in search box to find the stuff you're looking for.

8. Scan Documents

If you've Android device then you can scan your important documents like travel receipts, bills,  bank statements, etc. Simply click the "Scan" from the Add New menu and snap a photo of your document. If the document is very long or has more than 1 page then hit the + button (see the 2nd screen shot below) and continue to scan further pages.

Once you are done with scan click the Done button. All your scanned pages will be converted into a PDF format. Drive can also recognize text in the scanned documents due to its OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology. A simple search will also fetch results from your scanned documents. This is the best feature till date to go Paperless. Isn't it?
How to scan documents using Google Drive Android App

8. Send Fax from Drive

HelloFax is a Google Drive app that allows you to sign or fax any document stored in your Drive. You can fax to any physical fax machine, internet based fax service or computer fax service for a complete list of supported countries for phone based fax services check this page.

9. Video Editing

WeVideo is easy to use video editing app. You can trim, split your video files. You can also add text titles and captions. In short, it provides all sorts of tools to give a personal touch to your video files. Grab the extension for Chrome now!

10. Music and Audio files player for Google Drive

If you've stored voice memos or call recording files in your Drive. Then this Music App for Chrome is the right choice for you to listen them from your Google Drive.
Play Music Files From Google Drive

What's your tip for Google Drive?

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