- You can quickly share multimedia content with collaborators by creating and sharing a Google Drive folder with these steps.
- Nearly every major business or school uses at least one Google application. Google Drive is one of the most popular and versatile.
- Google Drive lets you share photos, music, spreadsheets, and more to anyone that has an email address, as well as organize those files into folders.
- This story is a part of Business Insider’s Guide to Google Drive.
These days, Google has an application for pretty much everything you’d need to do online, including creating and sharing documents, files, and folders. You can upload everything from photos to PDFs to MP3s onto Google Drive, Google’s file hosting service, and in just a few minutes, you can share them with anyone whose email address you have.
Sharing folders that contain documents, files, and other uploads via Google Drive is quick and easy, especially since pretty much everyone uses at least one Google product these days (and likely several of them).
Here’s how to do it.
How to share folders on Google Drive
1. To create your own folder on Google Drive , navigate to in your internet browser. Note that you will need to be logged into your Google account; Drive will prompt you to do so if you haven’t already.
2. Once signed in and at the above URL, you will see all of the files and folders currently stored on your Google Drive account.
3. To create a new folder, navigate to the “New” button in the upper left-hand corner of your screen, beneath the Google Drive logo, and click on it.
4. You will see a drop-down menu of options, including one for “Folder.” Clicking on this will allow you to create a new folder from scratch. (Note that if you already have a folder of documents on your computer that you would like to upload in its entirety, you should choose the “Folder upload” option in this menu.)
5. After clicking on “New” and then “Folder,” you will be given a pop-up window in which to enter the title of your folder. Call it whatever you like.
5. Once you enter a title for your folder and hit the Enter or Return key on your keyboard, you will see the folder appear in your Google Drive file list. Click the title of your folder to open it.
6. From here, you can upload files to your folder by either dragging and dropping them into the window from your computer, or you can upload manually by right clicking on the screen and selecting the “Upload files” option.
7. Once you have the files uploaded that you want to share, it’s time to share the folder. Doing so is simple! First, make sure to open the folder. Then, click on the folder title in the menu at the top of the screen. A drop down menu will appear, and from there you should select the option to share by clicking “Share.”
8. A pop-up window will appear that allows you to enter the name or email address of the person you would like to share the folder with. Note that entering a person’s name will only work if they are part of your contacts list and therefore their email address will be auto-generated. You can add as many people as you’d like to the sharing permissions; simply press the enter key after inputting each person’s address.
9. Once you’ve put in the email addresses of anyone you want to share the folder with, hit “Send” and an invitation to open the folder will be sent.
10. If you would rather share the folder directly, via instant message or text, you can get a URL by clicking “Get shareable link” in the upper right-hand corner of the pop-up window that appears after you hit “Share.” Simply click on “copy link” and you can then paste it to the recipient directly.
It’s also worth noting that you can and should ensure that you’re setting proper file sharing permissions to ensure the safety of your files. This option can be seen in the “shareable link” pop-up, where you have the option to allow those with the folder’s link to edit its contents or simply view them.
There you have it! Uploading and sharing folders on Google Drive is easy, and the more you do it, the quicker the process becomes.
Google docs are the best free alternative to Microsoft Office. Moreover, Google Docs provides the flexibility of being a web-based app; there is no need to install on your local PC. Google offers Google Sheets to replace Microsoft Excel, and there are more web-based applications from Google to replace Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Forms (Create Google Forms) similar to office tools.
By default, Google allows sharing Google Docs or Google Sheets to other users with a valid Gmail ID. You can limit their access to the document on a different level like view/comment/edit etc. Google SpreadSheet may have multiple sheets, and there is no easy solution to share these individual sheets with your team members.
We are going to discuss a solution to share only a particular sheet from a multiple sheets Google Spread Sheet.
Step 1: Protect Google SpreadSheet (Primary) to Limit Access to Specific People
This step is very important since we are going to use a link to share the primary document with another user. Google documents can view in public or viewable to anybody with a share link. You can change this access and limit only to certain members that you allow.
Open the required Google spreadsheet (we say primary sheet) and click on the Share button on the right top corner of the document. Now click on Advanced from the “Share with others” window. Now you will be on the ShareSettings window, click on “Change” link. Chose “Off – Specific people” from the next Link sharing window and click on Save button.
This step is critical since you are going to expose the share link with your team and you have to make sure they won’t be able to access your entire spreadsheet with this shared link.
Step 2: Get A Google Sheet Share Link
Once you complete the above step, now you will be back on the “Sharing settings” window and you can copy the link from the share window. Keep this link saved in notepad or somewhere for future use. If you miss this link, you can always come back to this screen and get the share link.
To get the Google Sheet share link from the main screen, click on Share > Advanced > Link to share. Alternatively, you can get the same link from File Menu > Share > Advanced > Link to share.
Step 3: Create a New Google Spreadsheet (Secondary) to Share with Your Team Members
Now you need to create a new spreadsheet to share with the user. This is the sheet you are going to share with your team. Just go to Google Sheet application window and create a new spreadsheet with a valid name. There is no need to type any data inside of this sheet at this point.
Step 4: Import Google Individual Spreadsheet to A New Google Sheet
Well, in this step we are going to import the required individual Google sheet from the primary document to a new Google SpreadSheet (secondary) that you created in Step 3. We are going to use a function called “IMPORTRANGE” The syntax is:-
IMPORTRANGE (spreadsheet key, range_string)
We chose row A1 to type Spread Sheet heading and used row A2 to insert the function. The import function is like this;
=IMPORTRANGE(“sheet (primary) share link”,”share sheet name!share range start column: share range end column
In our example, we inserted the following URL and press Enter once you complete it. In this function, the URL is the same that we got in Step 2, Summary is the tab or sheet name from Primary Google SpreadSheet, and A & F are the cell ranges that you want to share. Don’t forget to insert the ‘!’ after sheet name and ‘:’ between row letters in the function.
Now you will see on A2 “#REF! and hover your cursor on top of it and click Allow Access. The secondary sheet will import the values now from the primary Google SpreadSheet specified tab/sheet.
This trick will import only the values from the primary sheet. You have to take care of the styling and renaming the secondary sheet as per your requirement.
Step 5: Provide Your Members’ Limited Access to A New Google Sheet
You have to define the limited access to your team members. Click on Share button > Share with others window > Enter Gmail address of your team member > Change the access from “Can edit” to “Can comment”. This step protects new Google spreadsheet users from altering the share link that may expose more information than you intend to share.
Now you are done with the Google Spreadsheet tab sharing. Whenever you make any changes in the Primary Google Spreadsheet tab, the secondary sheet values will automatically update with primary table values.
You can use this workaround to share individual tabs of a Google Spreadsheet with separate members from your team.
Google lets you create, work and share these office documents with your teammates or office mates with a valid Gmail account. The beauty of this web application is more than one member can work on this document at a time; an ideal solution to draft your school project with your team.
This workaround is very useful for schools, a small-scale business where they want to share individual sheets with particular people. The solution is a bit tricky, but works well and easy to implement. Let’s take a two-sheet Google SpreadSheet as an example and will show you how to share only the sheet named “Summary” with one of the team members.
The downside of this solution is, you have to create separate secondary Google spreadsheets for each member on your team, but this will give you high security and your primary spreadsheet will be isolated and secure from other team members.
Also, you can’t reflect on the cell format on the Secondary Google Sheet. Whatever the color code or format of the cell you did on the Primary sheet is limited to that sheet. It won’t copy to the Secondary with this solution.
However, this workaround is a quick and free solution to manage multiple sheets separately with a master sheet. With this solution, you can share each tab of your primary sheet with the secondary Google Sheet.
