5 Little-Known Tips Are Essential

It would be a real shame to settle for just that At least with Google Drive. The office suite in the cloud has plenty of little “tips and tricks” that quickly become necessary on a daily basis. For example, did you know that you can quickly host an image to integrate it directly into a web page, perform advanced searches in your files, or restore a previous state of a given file?

In this file, we take 5 little-known tips that we think can make a difference How you use Google Drive.

1. How to get a (real) direct link to a file or image?

You already know this: Google Drive can host multiple files. However, even with the sharing link and necessary authorizations, it is impossible to integrate an image hosted on a third-party site into Google Drive. Luckily there’s a trick that lets you get a direct link to your files hosted on Google Drive.

To get a direct link to any file in Google Drive:

• Click the share icon circled in red in the screenshot above

You can find this button in several places – you can also open the same window by right-clicking on the file Get the link

• In the section Public access Select All users with a link and will Reader
• Click on Copy the link
• Paste it in notepad
• We now need to change the link of the form https://drive.google.com/file/d/[ID_DU_FICHIER]/view?usp=sharing to an address like https://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=[ID_DU_FICHIER]

[ID_DU_FICHIER] Represents the longest string of characters that will appear in the link you copied. This is the index address for the file you want to embed. The address is https://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=[ID_DU_FICHIER] A direct address for your file. If it’s an image, put it directly in an html page Can be embedded with tag.

2. How to edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint files with Google Drive?

Google Drive is completely unnecessary to pay for Microsoft Office 365 license. You can easily create Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files from Google Drive, or edit Microsoft suite-generated files directly into Google Docs, Google Sheets, or Google Slides, the main equivalent.

Even more practical: If you already have Google Docs, Google Sheets or Google Slides files on your drive, you can download them to the Microsoft Office version with a simple right-click. To open a Word, Excel, or PowerPoint file in Google Drive, it couldn’t be simpler: just double-click it.

In the same way you can save any document as its Microsoft Office equivalent. To do this, go to File > Download And select the appropriate format.

3. How to do Advanced Search in Google Drive?

If your Google Drive has turned into an unintelligible mess made up of so many files over time, don’t panic if the classic search doesn’t help you find all of their names. Use the advanced search! The trick is to click on the “Mixer” icon to the right of the search field.

Note that with Advanced Search you are not limited to searches on filenames. You can search for words directly in the body of your documents using the “Contains Words” field.

4. How to restore a previous state of a file in Google Drive?

Google Drive has more than one advantage, one of which is that the platform keeps a history of changes made to your files. This service also helps to restore the previous state of the file if needed. The feature is very practical during collaborative work. If one of the contributors accidentally deletes a part of the file, it is very easy to restore the previous version of the document in a few clicks.

Two views to access versions of a file. If it’s a Google file:

• Open the document
• Go inside File > Version History > View Version History

For all other files:

• Navigate to your Google Drive where the file is located
• Right click on it
• Go inside Edition History

5. How to use comments in Google Drive documents?

Another very useful option, especially when working together on the same document: comments. You can comment on any piece of text in Google Docs. Also in Google Sheets or Google Slides. These comments can explain a change, ask the next editor to question a paragraph, a formula, or embellish any part of the file with an external note, message, web link, etc.

These comments appear in a post in the margin of the documents. Using feedback well can increase your team’s productivity, avoid round trips and other unnecessary meetings.

And you, you know Another Google Drive trick Are you constantly using it in your work, making better use of other services, or needing to quickly complete some tasks with your documents? Feel free to share in the comments. We will try to add it to this article in a future update.

Plus, feel free to tell us what your favorite tip is after reading this article!