HOW TO ORGANIZE GOOGLE DRIVE

Google Drive is a file storage app for G Suite that allows you to store your files securely and access them from any device, as well as create, open, and edit your files. I’ve used G Suite for many years with all of my other jobs and for my personal use so I was happy to see that my current school utilized it when I began working here 2 years ago. As a teacher I have a lot of files stored in my drive and I used to struggle with keeping them all organized. I recently went through and did a massive cleaning and organizing of all of my files and it was one of the best decisions I made.

Having everything organized and labeled made finding files so much easier and made it easy for my team members to access shared files. In this post, I will be sharing some of my favorite ways to help keep my Google Drive organized and hope that these tips and tricks work for you too.

COLOR CODING AND NAMING FOLDERS

Color coding is one of my favorite ways to organize my folders in Google Drive. There are so many ways that you can color code folders in Google Drive. It’s best to come up with your own system for color coding and stick with what works for you. For my example, I have the files in the photo below color coded by school year with miscellaneous folders color coded at the end. Here is how you can add a color to your folders in Google Drive. Right click the file folder you wish to color code and select Change Color. Select from one of the preset Google Drive folder colors. It’s that simple.

One of the things I like to do is also add a number to the beginning of my file folder’s name. That way I can organize the folders the way I want to. Google Drive will automatically save your folders and files in alphabetical order. Adding a number to the beginning helps you to organize them in the way you want. I always label the most used folder with a number 1. In the example above the first folder is the Drive folder for the current school year. You can also add a number in the title of your files as well. This can help you to organize files within a folder in a certain order that fits your needs.

UTILIZING STARRED FEATURE IN GOOGLE DRIVE

I only recently began using the starred feature in my Google Drive and it has helped me so much. I love saving my most accessed files in the starred section which allows me to access them with ease. At the end of each school year I go through and re-organize my starred files and update them to the ones that I will need to access for the upcoming school year. Here is how you can add files to your starred section in Google Drive. Right click on the folder or file that you want to add to your starred section and select Add to Starred. That’s it! Now your file or folder will be saved under the starred section of your Google Drive. This trick is great for any files or folders that are bury within several folders in your Drive that you need to access frequently. Saving them in the starred section will allow for much easier access when needed with less clicks.

Note: the best way to optimize your starred section would be to only save selected files and/or folders in that section. The more documents you save to the starred section, the more cluttered it becomes, making it harder to access files and defeating the purpose of using the starred section. I would also recommend clearing out your starred section every so often, deleting files that are no longer frequently used and making room for newer documents that need to be accessed.

ADDING SHORTCUTS IN GOOGLE DRIVE

I will admit, I only just recently heard about using the shortcut feature in Google Drive and I absolutely love it. One of the biggest challenges I had with organizing my files in Google Drive was trying to find a way to organize all of the documents that have been shared with me from other co-workers. Since I am not the original owner of any document in the Shared with me section of Google Drive, I am not able to always organize the files and folders in the way I see fit. Once I discovered the shortcut feature in Google Drive, I was able to organize the hundreds of shared documents in my Shared with me section more efficiently. Here is how you can organize shared files in your drive using the shortcut feature.

In the Shared with Me section of Google Drive, select a folder or file that you want to organize in your Google Drive. Next, right click and select Add shortcut to Drive. Then select the location on your Drive where you want to save a shortcut link to the folder or document and hit enter. You will receive a message asking you to confirm adding the shortcut. Select Add shortcut. Now you will have a shortcut link to the shared folder or file in your Google Drive. This will allow you to access the original file that was sent to you in a place that’s more convenient and makes sense to you.

There are so many other tips and tricks to organizing your Google Drive but these are some of my favorite ones to use to help me get organized. Thank you for reading this post. If you found this post to be helpful or if you have more tips and tricks on organizing your Google Drive files, please leave a comment below!