Google Drive Basic Controls

Quick reference

• 00:04 Welcome to Google Drive the simple yet powerful way to manage all your files,
• 00:09 and folders, and collaborate with others.
• 00:13 Let's get started by learning how to access your Drive account.
• 00:17 To access Google Drive, you'll first need to login to your Google account.
• 00:23 Now you may already be familiar with other Google products,
• 00:26 such as Gmail or Google Calendar.
• 00:29 Once you've logged into your Google account,
• 00:32 you will see this icon in the top right-hand corner of your screen.
• 00:36 And this is perhaps the easiest way to access Drive.
• 00:40 By selecting this icon,
• 00:42 you will see a full list of Google applications that are available to you.
• 00:47 And here you see Drive is one of the options available.
• 00:51 Once we're in our Drive account,
• 00:53 you will see a search bar at the top of your screen.
• 00:57 This will allow you to easily and
• 00:58 very quickly discover the files that you were looking for.
• 01:03 You can either start to type in keywords directly into the search bar, or
• 01:07 start to filter by a particular file type.
• 01:11 If you select the arrow in the right corner of the search bar,
• 01:15 you will be able to search by more advanced options.
• 01:18 Such as who is the owner of the file, and when was that file last modified?
• 01:24 Below the search bar, we have a few additional options and
• 01:27 areas that we want to get familiar with.
• 01:30 The first one is changing the view of our files.
• 01:34 Here you see I'm viewing my folders in a traditional list view.
• 01:38 But what if I'd like to view this in a grid format?
• 01:42 By selecting this option, I can toggle between a List view and a Grid view.
• 01:49 Next to it, I have a details icon, by clicking this, a new area is expanded.
• 01:55 And depending on what I have selected on the left-hand side of the screen,
• 01:59 I can view additional details about that file or folder.
• 02:04 I can even click the Activity link here and see other pieces of information.
• 02:09 Such as when this file was last edited and who edited it as part of that process.
• 02:15 Next we have a help icon, this will show you some of the more popular help files
• 02:20 as you work with Google Drive, and you can also search for particular topics.
• 02:25 And, lastly, we have the gear icon which will allow us to edit particular settings.
• 02:31 The last thing we want to be familiar with is the left-hand side of the screen,
• 02:35 and this is referred to as the Control Panel.
• 02:39 At the top we have access to My Drive, and you can expand
• 02:44 this to see other folders or sub folders which may be available to you.
• 02:49 Below that we have Shared with me, these are files or
• 02:53 folders that others have shared with me via my Google Drive account.
• 02:59 Next we can filter our files by recency, this is showing all of my files,
• 03:04 and the last ones in which I've opened or edited within Drive.
• 03:09 You also have direct access to your Google Photos.
• 03:12 This is something that is built directly within Google Drive.
• 03:16 So you can access your images, and other pictures from your Drive account.
• 03:21 Next we have Starred,
• 03:23 this allows us to filter certain files which we have highlighted.
• 03:27 Perhaps files that we'd like to access more easily than others, and
• 03:31 we can filter by that the Starred option here.
• 03:34 Let's take a closer look at how we can star certain items within Google Drive.
• 03:39 Staring an item can be very helpful if you want to highlight certain files or
• 03:44 folders that you work with frequently.
• 03:46 In this example let's say that I'd like to come back to this file here.
• 03:51 To start this particular file I need to right click and select Add star.
• 03:57 Alternatively, I can also go up to my menu, select the More actions icon.
• 04:03 And select Add or Remove star in this case,
• 04:06 if I desire to remove this particular icon.
• 04:09 You will notice when item is starred you will have the icon located to the right of
• 04:14 the description.
• 04:16 Now when I select Starred from the menu on the left,
• 04:20 I get a nice summary of all of the files or folders that have been starred.
• 04:25 And then we have Trash, if we wanna review items that we have schedule to be trashed.
• 04:29 And we can decide to empty this trash at anytime that we've like.
• 04:34 The very last thing at the bottom of the Control panel is the Upgrade storage.
• 04:39 In here it gives us a quick summary of how much storage we are using.
• 04:44 As you can see here I'm currently using 2 GB of a total of 30 GB.
• 04:51 So the three main areas we wanna be familiar with
• 04:54 are the Search bar at the top of the screen.
• 04:57 The Tool bar which allows us to toggle between a few different views along with
• 05:02 some additional helpful options.
• 05:04 And, lastly, the Control Panel allowing us to view and
• 05:08 filter certain files and folders within our Drive account.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.