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2023 Google Resource Roundup
Google Tips and Tricks

2023 Google Resource Roundup

by Diana Benner
written by Diana Benner

Every year, I gather all the fabulous Google resources from our TechNotes blog and put them all in one place for you. This year, we’ve had some amazing posts on everything from Google’s new AI tools to Google experiments. Check out this incredible list of Google articles from 2023 categorized by topic/tool.

Google Add-Ons

You Can Do That with Autocrat blog detailing the Autocrat add-on as a Google resource.

AI

Blog outlining three tools to use with Sheets to help write formulas.

Announcements

Calendar

Blog article outlining how to teach students to use Google Calendar.

Cybersecurity

Google Docs

12 Google Docs Features to Try blog article

Google Drive

Experiments

10 Google Experiments to Explore

Sheets

8 More Google Sheets Tips

Various Google Topics and Tools

Article outlining how to organize and clean up your Drive.

In addition, don’t forget to check out our Google resource roundups from previous years. Happy New Year, everyone!

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ChromebooksGoogle Tips and Tricks

Google Drive Bingo: Explore 25 Google Drive Tips

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

One of my favorite Google tools? Google Drive. It’s a phenomenal mixing board for getting things done, saving files, and more. If you have a Google Workspace for Education account, Google Drive is where you start and end. In some ways, it’s the Alpha and Omega of cloud storage. Let’s explore some ways Google Drive is so amazing, and play bingo, too.

Get your Virtual Bingo Card with additional tips at the end of this post!

To get you started, here are some of my essential Google Drive tips. I’ve followed them up with some extras you may appreciate. Each tip comes with a resource link, either to a video or a blog entry. Ready to get started?

Grab your Bingo Dauber

Here are a few of the Google Drive tips featured in your virtual Bingo card. How many of them can you check off your list? Get your ink dauber and worksheet, and let’s get started. Sing out when you get four corners, cover all blocks, or get a straight line, ok?

1. Color code your files.

Wish you had an easy way to call your attention to your own folders in Google Drive? I don’t know about you, but I love relying on colored folders (e.g., green, red, blue, purple) when working with paper. I do the same digitally with Google Drive, adjusting the colors as needed. Just right click on the file name and select “Change color.”

2. Convert all Drive uploads to work with Docs.

When you know how much space you have allocated for Microsoft Office documents (XLS, PPT, DOC), this option makes sense. Instead of using your precious Google Drive space, have Google Drive automatically convert MS Office documents to Google Docs. You’ll save space, which is important because space, even in Google Drive, can cost you money.

Look for the Settings icon, a gear cog, in the top right-hand corner of your Google Drive screen.

3. Use emojis or special characters (! # @ ^) to change the sort order of folders and files in your Drive.

You can easily add emojis and special characters to the front of your folder title or filename. When you do this, you change the sort order of the folders and/or files.

Copy-n-paste emojis from Emoji Copy-Paste

This allows you to emphasize that certain files come first no matter what their title is.

4. Organize your Google Drive with workspaces for easy access.

It’s so easy to add several files that are relevant to a common topic or purpose. When you group those files as a Workspace, they become easier to find. That’s a lifesaver in cloud storage where it can be easy to misplace items.

5. Adjust the view of your Google Drive by switching from grid to list view.

Want to see image thumbnails? Use grid view to get a preview of the images that you may have stored in Google Drive. Want an alphabetical list based on the title of a file? Use list view to get that sortable list of filenames.

Click the button shown to switch between grid and list view. The list view button (not shown) appears in the same place as the Grid button (shown).

6. Add a description and hashtag to a Google Drive file to make it easier to find.

Some folks put things in Google Drive, and absent a way to organize files (I organize by year, never deeper than two folder levels), they lose their marbles. Er, I meant to say, they lose their files and lose their marbles as a result. You can right-click and add a description to any Google Drive file. Add hashtags and they may help you find things more easily.

What’s more, you can see the file’s activity from the right panel that pops up. You can also open the file and view Activity Dashboard via Tools.

7. Refine a search by date, type, owner, word search, and more.

Make it easy for yourself to find files. If you’re not using hashtags in descriptions, then use Google Drive’s search options. You can narrow the search results if you use the search options available.

8. Show the file location for a shortcut.

Wish you knew where the file a shortcut links to is located? Right-click the file shortcut to see its actual file location. Another tip to keep in mind?

This next tip is a bonus tip, not included in Google Drive Virtual Bingo Card.

9. Easily open a file’s home folder from the open file.

It’s so easy to do a Google Drive search, find a file, open it, but then still not know where it is. To find the location of the original file, open the file from the search results. Then look for the small folder next to the document title. Click the arrow next to the folder. It will allow you to open the folder where the file resides. To find the file, look for it in alphabetical order.

10. Organize and move items inside Google Drive.

There are three different ways to move items in Google Drive. Let’s discuss two of them in this tip (more later).

The first involves using the left sidebar. Navigate to the file(s) you want to move in the main screen, select them (shift or ctrl click works), then click and drag them to the folder in the left sidebar where you want the file(s) to reside.

The second approach is to right-click and choose “Move to” to relocate files to a preferred location.

11. Use keyboard commands to copy and move files.

A new feature for those of using Chrome or Chromium browsers is using the shortcut Ctrl-C (copy) to copy several files. You can also move files using Ctrl-X in this manner. Once you have copied/cut files, go to your desired folder destination. Then, press Ctrl-V to paste the file(s) in.

12. Use keyboard shortcuts to create content.

Did you know you can create content using keyboard shortcuts? In Google Drive, you can use the following keyboard shortcuts to create new documents:

  • Shift – T to make a Google Doc
  • Shift – P for Google Slides
  • Shift – S for Google Sheets

These documents come up as untitled, blank documents in whatever folder you happen to be in when you create them.

13. Create a Google Drive-based photo album.

Do you like storing photos in Google Drive? It’s an easy place to drop images off your phone. You can even set it up so that images get placed there via Google Forms, or you can share a Google Drive folder with others. Then, they can place images and media files in a shared collaborative space. Using Google Drive and Google Sites, you can even create a website photo album!

Read the blog article.

If you simply want to use pictures from a Google Drive folder in a Slides presentation, try this approach. Use the Photos to Slide Chrome add-on. It makes it easy to select the images you want to use, then shuffle slides to arrange pictures. You can import up to 1,000 images at a time and sort them by time, filename, or description.

14. Remove duplicate files.

Need to remove duplicate files, but you’re not sure where they might be? Sometimes, when you drag and drop, your finger slips, and who knows where those copies went. The Google Drive Cleaner is my go-to solution for removing duplicates.

15. Set up a Shared Drive to assign to the team.

If you’ve worked with Google Documents, you know what a pain it is when someone leaves. What happens is the Google Admin deletes that user’s account. Even if everyone said that they “got” the files, there’s always one missing. To make sure that critical files for a team don’t go missing, put them in a Google Shared drive. That way, they belong to the team, not to one person.

Want More? Time for Google Drive Bingo

Looking for extra tips? Be sure to play Google Bingo. Get your card here for 10 additional Google Drive tips.

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ChromebooksGoogle Tips and Tricks

Google Drive Direct Link Generator Makes Downloads Easy

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Wish you had an easy way to get a direct link to a file stored in Google Drive? If the answer is “Yes,” you are not alone. This is a much sought-after functionality. Before you see what it can do, let’s clarify why this is such an important feature.

Ever put a compressed zip file in your Google Drive and want people to download it? You may have an image or video that you want people to save to their devices. Tony Vincent writes:

I use the direct link generator for making QR codes for images, making them easy easier to copy and paste than trying to do that from a Google Drive interface. ????

Source: Tony Vincent via Mastodon (Shapegrams)

When you click on a Google Drive item and select “Get the Shared Link,” you’ll see a link with a lot of gobbledy-gook. This means that people will see an intermediary or preview page. What you want to happen is for people to click on the link and for an immediate download to occur.

What Does This Tool Do?

This tool allows you to generate a direct download link to files you have stored in Google Drive. A direct link will immediately start downloading the file. This skips the step of opening the file for preview.

You can find the Google Drive Direct Link Generator online. The trick has been around for a while, and the steps, available online, are easy to follow.

Step 1: Get the Shareable Link

Adapted from source

Now that you’ve double-checked the checklist for the file, you are ready to share the file link. Since this is for files that are NOT Google Docs/Sheets/Slides/Drawings, you can focus on non-Google content. This can include unconverted Microsoft file formats (e.g., XLSx, PPTx, DOCx) and other file formats (e.g. MP4/M4V/AVI videos, PNG/JPG images, compressed ZIP/7z/RAR files, MP3, and OGG).

For this example, I will be sharing direct links to videos that are large, and I want to make them available for others to save rather than view online:

To get the share-friendly link, right-click (or Command-Click on a Mac) to see the menu that appears:

Selecting “Get link” will bring up a screen that looks like this one; at this point you can change the general access to “Anyone with the link” and click “Copy link.”

Clicking “Copy link” will give you a link like the one shown below:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-qM0u99b941LoRppGTSJfLoZdKAtcJRt2/view?usp=share_link

Step 2: Generate a Direct Link

To generate the direct link, go to the Google Drive Direct Link Generator and paste in the Google link.

When you click the “Create Direct Link” button, it will generate the direct link.

Now you are ready to copy and paste the output link and share that with others via a website or email. When they click on this newly generated link, they might see a message like the one shown below:

When you click “Download anyway,” the file will save to your device. As you can see, the Google Drive Direct Link Generator makes it easy to share a link people can use. It works best with non-Google files, such as compressed zip files (perhaps containing a collection of text files or other files) and media. Give it a try!

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AndroidGoogle Tips and TricksiOS Tips and TricksTechnical Support

Find Your Stuff: Escape the File Management Maze

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

“I hate Google, I can’t ever find anything,” says a colleague (name withheld). Having grown up organizing files and folders on floppy disks and hard drives, I can find most things. I spent most of my time at the command line, typing in text commands to copy, move, and delete files and folders. Those experiences, beginning at age 13, have served me well. However, the advent of cloud storage and obscure file saving protocols confuse many. Let’s take a look at some ways you can improve your file management skills.

First, let’s review findings from a The Verge article, File Not Found by Monica Chin.

Key Findings

College professors are encountering a growing problem with their students. Monica Chins notes the following:

The concept of file folders and directories…is gibberish to many modern students.

The problem isn’t only with college students. I have seen it firsthand on the desktops of teachers, directors, and colleagues in K-12. The fact is, they lack the mental schema for organizing digital files into folders. It’s too easy to create a file wherever they may be on their device or the cloud, then forget about it. When they need to locate it again, who knows?

Lacking digital organizational skills, educators and students resort to other approaches. Here are a few common scenarios I have personally seen.

Dysfunctional File Management Scenarios

Some may argue that whatever works, that’s what you do. But such solutions to file management problems can backfire. Before I share an approach and digital tools that make sense, let’s revisit a few that don’t.

Scenario #1: Print to PDF

In one situation, a teacher completing the Texas Reading Academy online saved her documents to the default Download folder, so that there were soon hundreds of files to sort through. It was almost easier to go back to the source and save the item again than to move it to the top of the list (chronological sort).

Scenario #2: Snap a Photo with Your Smartphone

Some see Google/Apple Photos apps offer a better, visual way of content management. Instead of saving a file to a specific location, they snap a photo of it. When they need the content of the file, they  scroll through the Photos app, zooming in as needed.

How many times have you seen someone snapping pictures of their computer screen at work? They weren’t documenting a heinous email. Instead, they were creating a visual archive.

Scenario #3: Save to Desktop

A common scenario, this one involves people putting all their files on the desktop of their device. I’ve seen some computers’ hard drives fail under the strain. This results in a catastrophic data loss.

How can you avoid this? Take advantage of any one of the following techniques. I’ve used them all with success.

Two Tips to Better File Management

Organizing files and folders since I was a youngster, I have found that the easier the system, the better. Easier systems are those that don’t expect me to remember where I put stuff. To ease my mind, I have relied on one or both of these tips below.

Tip #1: Organize by Year

folder structure in Google Drive
Screenshot by author

Many of create an amazing amount of content each year. Keeping track of it can be quite difficult. In the old days, people organized content by topic. This presumably made it easier to find with a few files. The truth is, organizing by topic results in a huge mess of folders and files.

Instead, organize by year. Create a folder (e.g. 2022, 2021, 2020), then anything you make, drop it in that folder. Put related files together. For example, say you have a word processing document with an embedded chart. Put the document and the spreadsheet in a folder together.

If folders are tough, give them the same prefix for their filename, such as “Project123_.” This ensures they appear together in the alphabetical list of files. This also makes the files findable.

One more suggestion: Try creating an index document of all the files you have. This is easy to do in Google Docs or on your computer.

Tip #2: Try Inbox Zero Approach

file manager
Screenshot by author

Most people have trouble remembering what they have and whether it’s worth keeping. When you can go out on the web to find anything, you have to decide what’s essential or not. Inbox Zero uses a simple organizational principle for email. This is a variation on that system.

On my hard drive, I have two overarching categories. They include the following:

  • Closed folder
  • Open folder

You can call your folders anything, but I wanted simple words that I didn’t have to think about much. The Closed folder has sensitive data, data I have encrypted. It includes my medical records, contracts, anything else I wouldn’t want anyone to see. The Open folder has everything else. Now, in each folder, I have more folders that I dump everything into.

file manager
Screenshot by author

It looks like this (folder names shown only):

  • Closed
    • Family
      • 2021
      • 2020
      • 2019, etc.
    • Work
      • 2021
      • 2020
      • 2019, etc.

The Open folder has the same organizational structure. Again, I don’t want to spend a lot of time thinking about how to place files. I’d rather spend my decision-making power on more important tasks. The reason I made it this way is that I wanted a quick way to back up important files from my computer. Anything I am working on this year (2021), goes into the 2021 Work folder. If it’s personal, it goes in the _Open->_2021 folder. See how easy that is?

Of course, anything I put in the Closed folder, I encrypt. You may not want to mess with that. You could organize by year, then drop encrypted files in with unencrypted items. Keep it as simple as you need to.

Get a List of Files and Folders

Need to know where everything is? If on Windows, you can do this several ways.

Approach #1: Tree

Open the CMD line (type “cmd” in the search bar at bottom right), then when you get to the command line, type the following:

tree /f /a > file.txt.

The file.txt file will contain a hierarchical listing of all the files on your device, as shown below.

file manager
Screenshot by author

Approach #2: Dir

Another CMD line friendly approach is to use the Dir command. Open the CMD line and type:

dir c:\ /s /b /oe /a-d >index.txt

It will give you a file list inside a text document that you can review.

Approach #3: Directory Lister

If the command line approaches aren’t attractive, try Director Lister. This is a program you get in the Microsoft Store (free), that will index your folders and devices. Initial indexing will take a while, depending on the size of your storage device(s).

file manager
Screenshot by author

Once complete, you will be able to copy and paste the list of files stored on your computer’s hard drive.

file manager
Screenshot by author

What’s great is that you can get a file listing (see above) that is clickable. This makes it easy to search and find files for those located on your device.

And Directory Lister works with Google Drive for Desktop. You can see part of my Google Drive for Desktop (Google Workspace for Education) below:

file manager
Screenshot by author

That means, if you don’t know where a file is on Google Drive for Desktop, you can find it with Directory Lister.  See a search for a document below:

file manager Screenshot by author
Screenshot by author

What’s more, you can export the file and then pull it up in your internet browser to click on it. When you click on it, the file will open if it is not a Google document (e.g. *.gsheet, *.gslides). For example, PDFs, MP4s, and others will open in your browser. That’s simple file management!

More File Management Tools

Looking for more file management tools? Once you get into organizing files and folders on your computer or device, you may find you like it. I use several different tools, depending on what device I am on.

Here are my favorite digital tools by device:

  • Windows 10? Use Free Commander. I have mentioned it before in my Three Tips to Organize Google Drive blog entry. What’s more, I became a lifetime donor, which gives me free updates for the lifetime of the product.
  • Mac? Use muCommander. The free muCommander works on Windows as well, so if you work on both platforms, you may want to use one tool.
  • Android? Cx File Explorer. This easy-to0use, simple, and no-cost file manager makes navigating the guts of your Android device a cinch.
  • iOS? Readdle’s Documents.On iOS, you can’t jump between files and folders like you can on other devices, but you can put all your files and folders in one app. Readdle’s Documents is that app, and the best file/folder manager around for iOS. You can also read ebooks, play music, connect to cloud storage, and use WiFi transfer with it. It’s the Swiss Army knife of file managers on iOS.

The start of a new year is a great time to get your digital life organized. A few hours now will save you years of anguish later.

Feature Image Source

Photo by Mitchell Luo on Unsplash

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ChromebooksGoogle Tips and Tricks

Google Drive for Desktop Arrives

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

A few weekends past, I rode the rapids of Google change. With all the recent improvements to Google, you may be wondering which change in particular. If you’re an at-home user of Google Drive, you will be making the same journey soon. In fact, you will be able to make this transition anytime after July 19, 2021 and before October 21, 2021. You will start to see gentle prompts to switch from Backup and Sync to a new solution by August 18, 2021. But don’t worry; you are not making this journey alone. In this blog entry, you’ll see what the Google Drive transition from Backup and Sync to a new offering looks like.

drive for desktop

Where Are We Now?

If you use Google Drive’s Backup and Sync solution, you know that you can access your Drive via your device. For Windows users, that means using Windows Explorer. Tools like Explorer make it easy to interact with your cloud-based files. Mac users will rely on the Finder to move around their cloud storage or Google Drive. That’s a bit of a convenience, isn’t it?

Instead of using Google’s Backup and Sync solution, you will now see Google roll out a new solution. Before we jump into that new solution, we need to differentiate between two products. These two products are available to you, depending on what type of Google account you have.

In the coming weeks, Backup and Sync users will begin to see prompts asking them to transition to Drive for desktop, which we recommend doing by September 2021. After this point, users will see an in-product notification notifying them they’ll need to transition to continue syncing their files. For additional details on the transition from Backup and Sync to Drive for desktop, please refer to this Help Center article. Source: Google Blog

Personal Gmail Account – Google’s Backup and Sync

Many of us still rely on Google’s Backup and Sync for personal or consumer Google accounts. For educators, that means you use Backup and Sync to put and get files in your Google Drive. Files take up space in both places, on your device and in Google Drive.

Source: Google Blog

The main benefit of Backup and Sync is that you can back up large files on your device. Some times, when trying to put large files via your web browser into Google Drive, things don’t work so well. Backup and Sync solved this problem. But it’s not perfect.

Google Workspace Account – Google’s File Stream

If you work in an environment with Google Workspace, like at school, then you may have relied on Google File Stream. File Stream worked much like Backup and Sync, except for one important difference. Instead of saving files on your computer (and taking up precious space), all files are in the cloud. When you save files to File Stream, they don’t stay on your computer. Instead, they get moved to Google Drive in the cloud. But File Stream makes accessing them a matter of a double-clicking to open. This saves precious space on your device.

drive for desktop

Both solutions, Backup and Sync as well as File Stream, are going away soon because Google has replaced them.

The New Solution? Google Drive for Desktop

Drive for Desktop is the new name for File Stream. The main difference between the new solution and the old one is that Google Drive for Desktop works with personal Drive accounts, as well as work accounts. See the full list of features.

Drive for Desktop

What’s more, Google Drive for Desktop maps your personal and work Drives. This means that you can interact with both your personal and work Google Drive data on the same device. You could do this before with the old solutions, but it was clumsy. You had to have both Backup and Sync, as well as File Stream, installed on one computer. Not anymore.

Drive for Desktop

This image shows how the new Google Drive for Desktop makes switching between accounts easy. As you can see, you can have multiple Google Drive accounts appear:

Now, you can toggle between which account you want to use, adjust settings, and more. You can even copy files back-and-forth between the two Google Drives. As you can see in the screenshot below, I am able to copy or transfer files from my work to my personal Google Drive account. That’s amazing, especially when one is working with images, Microsoft documents, and more. For example, in the image below, you can see how Free Commander can be used to have dual pane access to work Drive and personal Drive:

Drive for Desktop

This quick slide show walks you through the painless installation. Google Backup and Sync will be uninstalled after you install the new Google Drive for Desktop.

Drive for Desktop

A few points to keep in mind:

  • Google File Stream user? Uninstall it before beginning the process.
  • Google Backup and Sync user? Be aware that your Google Drive for Desktop installation process will remove Backup and Sync.
  • Verify account? You will also be asked to verify which account you want to use. It’s easy to add accounts, as you can see above.

Since I am on a Windows 10 computer, I get to see both my work Drive and my personal Drive. This is handy because I can use Free Commander to copy-and-paste (or move) content from one Drive to the other. Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides documents cannot be duplicated, but if you have Word, Excel, PNG/JPG, or PDF files, those can be. Other supported file formats that do not include Google document formats are also supported.

Drive Security Update 8/3/2021: Were you aware that Google Drive is enhancing security of Share Links for files stored in Drive? Google reports that, “The security update will make Google Drive files more secure by updating their links to include a resource key and may lead to some new file access requests.” This may impact you if you are sharing Google Docs with others. Google points out, “If someone requests access to one of your files with the security update, you’ll receive an email telling you whether they tried to access your file using an old link. You can then send the person a new link with the resource key so that they can gain access” (source).

Google Drive for Desktop

drive for desktopDon’t be afraid to dive in and explore Google Drive for Desktop. You won’t regret the transition. The main benefits?

  • You have ONE application that allows you to interact with your work and personal Google Drive cloud storage.
  • You can save space on your local hard drive and only access what you need (it gets downloaded and becomes available transparently).
  • You can copy files between Drives using Windows Explorer, Free Commander for Windows 10 or your Mac’s Finder if you are on a Mac.
  • It’s easy to add more Google accounts (see image right illustrating my setup).

What are you waiting for? Give Google Drive for Desktop a try.

Feature Image Source

Photo by author.

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Announcements/Important DatesGoogle Tips and Tricks

Scout Out Fresh Ideas at TCEA’s Google Summer Camp

by Andrew Roush
written by Andrew Roush

With the approach of summer, many people are thinking about summer activities, especially for children, and even more especially as public events, gatherings, and programs begin to re-open. So it’s natural that thoughts turn to that staple of summer learning: the summer camp.

This year, TCEA is putting a twist on this all-American summer tradition by hosting a virtual Google Summer Camp. Rather than stitching together wallets and friendship bracelets, our friendly and experienced camp counselors will help campers weave together the various and ever-changing strands of Google apps and services, from Sheets and Slides to social-emotional learning and search strategies. 

No matter your role in education, we’re confident that exploring the back trails and shortcuts through the thick forest of Google-icious products can improve your work.

About the Google Summer Camp

Intrigued by the opportunity to goose up your game? TCEA’s professional development experts have designed a program with multiple sessions each day of camp, letting you explore across topics — no bug spray, sunscreen, or hiking boots required! We’ll help you blaze a trail to the new school year with up to 18 professional learning credit hours.

Here are the details:

  • When: June 22-24 from 8:30 a.m. – noon, Central (so you have the afternoons off to practice what you’ve learned or take a nap!)
  • Where: Online
  • Topics: Getting Going with Google Sites, Google Tools and Social Emotional Learning, Make the Most of YouTube, Collaboration and Creativity with Jamboard, Digital Literacy and Google Tools, Secret Gmail Tips, To Infinity and Beyond with Forms, Teaching Vocabulary with Google Tools, and more
  • Price: $119
  • All registrants receive one year of complimentary TCEA membership

All sessions will be recorded so that you can watch the ones you don’t attend live for up to a month. That’s a lot of learning and something that regular summer camp doesn’t include!

Ready to have some summer fun and give a boost to your teaching? Meet us at Google Summer Camp, and we’ll help you find the right path to professional learning.

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Google’s Drive Storage Policy: Avoid the Terror

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

This post was originally published December 15, 2020. It was updated on January 19, 2021, April 6, 2021, and 11/29/2023.

Google’s storage policy has left many scratching their heads. For consumers relying on Google’s free offerings, the threat to dump data raises fears. Let’s explore what their storage policy means for educators and what you can do as a free Gmail user.

Topics covered:

  • What Google’s storage policy says
  • Options for taking control of your data sprawl
  • How to best back up and clean out Gmail, Drive, and Photos
  • How to move email and files from one account to another
  • What the new policy’s multi-tiered approach (Education Fundamentals/Standard, Teaching and Learning Upgrade, Education Plus) means for educators

Ok, ready to get started? Let’s go.

What Google’s Storage Policy Says: For Consumers

The Google Storage policy governs storage of Google Photos, Google Drive, and Gmail. Remember, Google Drive includes Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, Forms, Jamboard, and Sites. You have one huge storage bucket, but all these components have to fit inside of it. This policy affects the consumer, or free, version of Google tools. We’ll discuss education users in a moment.

Here’s are the facts as I understand them:

  • If you are inactive (two years) or exceed storage limits, you will lose your data. This applies if you store data in Gmail, Drive, or Photos.
  • To be inactive, this means you’re not logging into these services.

Break the rules, and you’re not completely out of luck. Google offers you emails, notifications, and the opportunity to save your content. But, if you are using the free storage option, you have only 15GB of space available.

Most important for Google, you can invest in their Google One storage plan. So, you CAN avoid the cataclysm of losing data.

Avoiding Data Loss for Consumer Google Accounts

If you started using Google Drive because of free cloud storage, you may find paying to expand storage limits problematic. If that’s your attitude, you may want to avoid the Google One storage that augments your storage space. I no longer pay $1.99 a month for my Google One expanded storage (120 GB). What are my savings? It’s a truism that data expands to fit the space available. I’m so glad I switched to an alternative. What alternatives are there for you?

Let’s explore some of the options possible.

Keep Data Storage Local

google storage my drive

Suffering from data sprawl? You’re saving so much data, you can’t find the important stuff? You may need to take a slower approach that saves you money. Do this by keeping your data storage local.

To avoid recurring costs and keep your data local, follow these steps:

  • Divide your Google Drive into items a Shared with Others folder, and an Only for Me folder. The criteria I use for the Shared with Others folders is anything that is being shared with others for collaboration or is embedded in a website. Google Sites, Forms, Jamboards, and collaborative docs fall into this category.
  • Run the Google Drive Cleaner (learn more in this blog entry) to get rid of duplicate files. This step alone will save you space.
  • Save the Only for Me folder and its contents to your computer.
  • Get a USB external drive (2 terabytes is plenty. Remember, though, that old adage: “two is one, and one is none” so buy two. USB external drives last three to five years on average). You can use free tools to automate backups. One free automated backup solution is FileFreeSync. Or, take more control of them using tools like Free Commander (Mac alternatives).
  • Put that Only for Me content on both drives. It won’t matter if you have a Chromebook or laptop/desktop with insufficient hard drive space. You will be able to save the contents straight to the external drive (albeit, it may be slightly slower to access).

Once you have a backup of the Only for Me folder on your external drive(s), remove them from Google Drive. This will yield LOTS of space back to you. Worried about recurring costs vs initial cost of an external USB drive and replacement? Consider the following chart and graph.

It’s based off the Google One storage plan and this external drive (although there are less expensive brands available).

See an Google Sheet with cost breakdown and check my math.

After cleaning out my Google Drive, following the process in this blog post, I found myself at 3.1GB of 120 GB of space. That’s enough to walk away from Google One Storage.

True Story: Wedding Photos and Video

My daughter married a few years ago. I had approximately 14GB of wedding videos and pictures stored in my Google Drive for safekeeping. My daughter already had her own offline copy. To get that Drive space back, I saved them to my external drives using the process above. Wow, 18GB recouped! This dropped my usage from 46.9 GB used to 29.2 GB used. Your target number is under 15 GB since that is what you get for free. About 14 more GB to shave off my total storage needs.

Ready to clean out your Google Photos? If you’ve been backing up your smartphone’s photos to Google Photos, you have tons of junk pictures. Junk can include memes, cat pictures, or 52 lousy versions of one beautiful snap. Dump the lousy, keep the best. You will regain gigabytes of space.

chart of total storageDid You Know?

You can get a big picture overview of your Google Drive with Clean Drive.  It offers a seven day, free trial you can use to get a quick look at how your space is filled.  You can use it to find and eliminate duplicate files, find old and/or hidden files that take up space. One of my favorite features is bulk delete. There are other ways to do this, but this may be a solution you want to invest in. In the meantime, be sure to read the rest of this blog entry to learn about other tools that can save you time and money.

Find Google Alternatives

Google has a reputation of letting some of its best products die. Having an exit policy isn’t a bad idea. If you’re going to end up paying, why not choose email, photo, and storage options you control? One big complaint about Google is that you are their product. That’s how they tailor advertisements to your needs and interests.

If you want to find alternative’s to Google’s ecosystem, ease into it. Start with your Google Drive files, then your Gmail and photos. Here are some alternatives I use:

Gmail Alternative: Get a Switzerland-based Proton Mail account. You can start out with a free account with 500MB storage, 150 messages per day. If you practice Inbox Zero, this should work well for most. If you have thousands of Gmails and need to put them somewhere, then you will need ProtonMail Plus.  If you want other alternatives, consider another secure alternative for email. You will probably have to pay to store files online. Make sure you’re storing essential files and not one bit or byte more.

True Story: Over 10,000 Gmails

As a result of an earlier blog post, a Canadian wrote me and asked, “Can I migrate my over 10K Gmails into ProtonMail?” I told him that’s exactly what I had done using the ProtonMail Plus Import-Export app.

With PM Plus ($60 per year), you get 1,000 messages per day, labels, filters, and 5GB storage. What’s more, you can import your Gmail messages into PM Plus. I love the fact I can send encrypted emails, which comes in handy. I use that a few times a year for confidential bank/medical emails. Does this mean I got rid of my Gmail account? Goodness, no. I still give it out as my primary email address to catch spammers and others. I rely on my PM Plus account for family, banking, medical, and secure exchanges.

If Google were to suspend my email account, the loss wouldn’t be so great.

Drive Alternatives

Google Drive is unique in the quality of its collaboration options that you can pick from. Those aside, only put items you plan to share into your Shared with Others folder. These items include Google Sites, Google Docs (e.g. Slides, Sheets, Forms, Docs) that you will work together with others on, and/or Jamboard.

Working on a spreadsheet to calculate your expenses, use OnlyOffice or LibreOffice on your computer. Both are free for Mac/Windows/Linux and allows you to take advantage of your USB external drive for backup. You can even set up Portable Apps on your USB external drive so you always have access to the programs. Use Google Drive only for activities that need data collection or collaboration.

Cleaning Out Google Photos

monster octopus

Google Photos may be a monster with thousands of images to sort through. For some people, it may be easier for them pay the monthly fee for Google One storage. If that’s not you, then there are at least four steps I recommend to clean out Photos.

Cleaning out isn’t easy, but it’s doable. Be aware that you will have to deal with countless folders and images. Let’s review those four steps to clean out Photos.

Tip #1: Download and Organize

Manual movement of photos and videos can take a long time (days, weeks, years). Tools like Free Commander can make the job easier. Once cleaned up, you can use a no-cost, free, open source tool, DigiKam, to organize your photos. This provides better control of your photos than Google Photos online.

image editor screenshot digicam
Image Source: DigiKam

Tip #2: Remove Videos in Google Photos

To get more space back, remove videos stored in Google Photos. This is easy since you can type “video” in the Google Photos search bar, and you’ll get a list of videos. You can select them one at a time or by date and then use the MOVE TO TRASH option. When I cleaned out my Google Photos, I dropped 400 videos in the trash. That saved some space, I am sure.

photos in google video

It didn’t take too long to get rid of the videos shown above. Make sure to check and rid yourself of video space hogs.

Tip #3: Get Rid of “Unsupported Videos”

Go into the SETTINGS for Google Photos and manage “Unsupported Videos.” Trash those since Google can’t play them for you and they are just taking up space.

settings for google photos

Tip #4: Archive Images

Images like screenshots, memes, etc. take up space. But you don’t need them since you can find them online. Be sure to use Google Photos’ Archive option to dump these pictures. In that way, you get rid of images that are automatically backed up from your smartphone. These are images that can include memes, cat pics, and more.

google photo archive meme

Tip #5 – Storage Manager

Think you got it all? One final way to double-check is to use Google’s Storage Manager. You’ll be able to clean out discarded items (such as deleted and spam emails) and Google Drive deleted files. You will also be able to see large items and remove those.

manage your account storage

Whew, that was a lot of work. Ready to try some alternatives to Google products? Remember, this time, go lite. Only inlcude online items you need to share or collaborate with others.

Have Amazon Prime? Try Amazon Photos

One alternative to Google Photos is Dropbox. Others include  SmugMug  and Flickr. Remember, although you can back up every photo on your phone, you could also make another choice. That is, back up only those photos I want to share with others.

Wait, what if I want to back up my photos (cat pics included) off my phone? If you still want to do that, you can. Use an app that makes it easy to copy photos/videos from your smartphone. For iOS, use Readdle Documents. For Android, use WiFi File Transfer (shown below) to back up your photos to your computer. Both apps are available at no cost. What’s more, they force you to be more selective of the content you choose to back up.

wifi file transfer screenshot

Split Your Usage Among Many Accounts

What some of my friends and colleagues have decided to do is split their usage among several Google accounts. That is, they use one Gmail account with 15GB of free space for personal/family. They use another for professional/work communications. This results in a lot of Google accounts to manage (Bitwarden.com makes it easy to manage multiple usernames and passwords), but it does have a positive effect. You aren’t putting all your eggs in one basket.

transfer your content from google drive

How do you move content that ends up in the wrong space? It’s easier than you might think. You can use Thunderbird email program to move emails from one Gmail account to another via IMAP, if you need to. Tools like CloudHQ, MultCloud, and Google Takeout make it easy to save or move stuff. That stuff can include Google Drive files or emails. And, with those tools, you can move content between them. If you are moving Gmails and Drive content from Google Workspace (f.k.a. G Suite EDU), then Google Takeout Transfer is a must-have tool.

Need to copy a folder or migrate your Drive only? You might try those solutions.

google drive storage and file size limits

Image Source: Google’s Drive Storage FAQ for Admins

What Google’s New Storage Policy Means for Educators

Google’s new policy, going into effect July 2022, limits Google Workspace for Education users to a total of 100 terabytes of pooled storage. That means, if you have ten thousand students and three thousand staff, they will all share that 100 terabytes. This makes saving unlimited number of videos and content for free in Google Workspace for Education’s Drive storage a thing of the past. A few specific points from Google’s new policy for storage:

  • Education Fundamentals and Education Standard editions offer pooled storage of 100 terabytes, although institutions with greater than 20,000 students, faculty/staff will be provided additional storage. The process for requesting more storage becomes available at the end of 2021.
  • Your school district or organization can get additional storage through Education Plus and/or the Teaching and Learning Upgrade.
  • With the Education Plus upgrade, you receive an additional 20 GB for each paid license on top of the 100 TB of pooled cloud storage shared by your organization (source).
  • With the Teaching and Learning Upgrade, you get an additional 100 GB for each paid license in addition to the 100 TB of pooled cloud storage shared by your organization (source).

Worried that you will be running out of storage? You may want to get the Teaching and Learning Upgrade. One thing is for certain, teaching your faculty, staff and students how to manage their data has taken on some urgency. Share this blog entry to get them started.

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Image adapted by author.

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ChromebooksGoogle Tips and Tricks

Google Drive Gets a New Name

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

“In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or step back into safety,” says Abraham Maslow. As Google once again makes dramatic changes to its products, we must all step forward. In a recent announcement, Google stated that Drive File Stream is being renamed. It’s new name? Google Drive for desktop. Let’s explore this in more detail and see what it means for you.

Google Drive for desktop announcement

Here’s the official announcement from Google:
Drive File Stream is now Google Drive for desktop. The branding in the product has also been updated to Google Workspace, the new name for G Suite. The mount point path remains the same, so you can still find all your files in the same places, but shortcuts to the application have been renamed to Google Drive. On macOS, the application name has been changed to Google Drive. No application name changes on Windows.

This update also addresses Google Drive for desktop support for Apple M1 devices. M1 devices are based around a chip that offers improved performance per watt. The M1 chip combines features such as processor, I/O, security and memory into one single system on a chip (SoC). Google’s support for the M1 means Drive for desktop will work on any Mac. This Apple M1 chip support should take effect in April 2021.

Before we discuss Google Drive for desktop more, let’s take a look at some key takeaways for Google Drive. One important point to remember is that Google Drive for desktop (f.k.a. Google File Stream) is intended for work (e.g. Google Workspace users). Individual users can still rely on Google Backup and Sync.

Google Drive for desktop

Key Takeaways for Google Drive

At TCEA TechNotes, we’ve spent an awful lot of virtual ink on Google Drive. Let’s do a quick roundup of those blog entries:

Be sure to read other Google Drive relevant blog entries in TCEA TechNotes.

Google Drive for Desktop

One of the problems that Google Drive for desktop (f.k.a. Google File Stream) solves is described as follows:

Google File Stream does not save files on your local drive. Instead, it takes advantage of your always on, instant internet connection. File Stream accomplishes this by saving straight to the cloud, which is Google Drive. File Stream allows you to “See all of your files in Google Drive without using storage space on your computer.”

Even though files are saved in Google Drive (or in “the cloud”), you can still save files on your local hard drive for offline use. This makes it ideal for use in K-12 settings where hard drive storage space may be at a premium. You can see files in your Google Drive, but they are only temporarily saved to your computer when you open them. After you are done with them, they stop taking up space on your device. What a space-saver for educators working on small capacity hard drives (HDDs) or solid state drives (SSDs).

How to Get Google Drive for Desktop

You can get Google Drive for desktop online. You can get it as an individual, or ask your technology department to deploy it. Some tips excerpted from Google Workspace Admin:

  1. Verify that Drive File Stream will work for your organization. You can use Drive File Stream on these operating systems:
    • Windows: Windows 7 and up. Windows Server 2012 and up.
    • Mac: El Capitan (10.11) and up. For High Sierra (10.13) or newer
  2. Turn on sync for your organization. Allow Drive File Stream and specify whether users can see Drive File Stream download links.
  3. Install Drive File Stream on each user’s computer using one of these options:
    • Let each user install Drive File Stream on their own machine. For this option, users need administrator rights to their computer.
    • Download the Drive File Stream .exe file and deploy it in silent mode.

Learn more about deploying Google Drive for desktop in your organization.

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google tools
Google Tips and TricksLibraries

Google Tools for Your Library

by Nancy Jo Lambert, Guest Author
written by Nancy Jo Lambert, Guest Author

Google is a common tool in education. But are you getting the most out Google’s suite of applications in your library or media center? Here are some top tips for putting Google to work for you — and your students.

Google Drive Basics

Many students and educators use Google Drive every day. As a Google for Education Certified trainer though, I have noticed how many of us fail to use some of the basic features of Google Drive that can make our lives easier.

  • Priority: This is a relatively new feature of Google that I have been using this school year. I am still tweaking my workspace, but I find this useful for things that are more of an on-going project or task.  
  • Recent: I access my recent category quite often now when I am looking for something I was working on recently, but have closed that tab and need to access again. This has saved me on keeping so many tabs open, too.   
  • Favorites: I systematically add things to my favorites and then remove them when I am done accessing them on a regular basis. In some ways, the new Priority workspace has helped me alleviate some items from my favorites, but I still use Favorites regularly.
  • Search: Many people don’t utilize the advanced features of Google Drive search, but they should. When you click on the drop-down carrot in Google Drive search, you can search by type of file, owner, location, date modified, and various keywords. Incredibly helpful when you are looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack.
  • Open in a New Window: I have found that people don’t know the difference between viewing a PDF or other file in Google Drive, and opening it in a new tab. When you open in a new window, PDF or image, you are given the actual link in Google Drive that you can manipulate or share.

Google Sites

As a school librarian, I have been using Google Sites for a long time. Google Sites affords me the opportunity to build-out websites for a specific purpose. Here is a video with uses for Google Sites in education. My digital learning coach and I have built many Google Sites together through the years. Here are a few examples of sites Katrina Stroot and I have built for class learning activities and projects:

Google Keep

Google Keep is one of my favorite Google productivity tools. I use Google Keep every day, all day on my desktop, laptop, and phone. For many years now I have completely given up paper. I scan in documents, cards, flyers, or other information I need to a note on Keep. Google Keep is what makes it possible to add to my notes from anywhere at any time. Here is a video of me showing how I use various Google Keep notes for organization and productivity. 

Google Drawings

Google Drawings is a powerful tool for educators that is underutilized. I use Google Drawings to create digital displays, like this Library FAQ or Printing FAQ, as well as signs and posters I print out for library displays. You can access all my designs from this school year here. 

Tips

In June of 2019, I presented a Google Session at ISTE in Philadelphia. The session, “Google Tools You Aren’t Using in Your Library But Should Be” allowed each of us to focus on things about Google that we were passionate about. For my part, I focused on some Chrome extensions and some features of GSuite for Education products that I use regularly.

For our full site with information from James Allen, Sherry Gick, myself, Nikki D. Robertson, and Tiffany Whitehead, visit bit.ly/googlelibtools. For great how-to videos from Google for Education, check out the EDU in 90 Playlist. 

Google and the School Library

Google for Education and GSuite for Education offer so many useful tools and resources for educators. School librarians are in a unique space to use the tools and resources Google offers differently. I hope you will share how you use Google tools in your library on social media and tag @TCEALibSig when you share!

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Google Tips and Tricks

Fresh Updates for Google Docs and Drive

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Have you ever been working in Google Docs and suddenly long for a Microsoft Word feature? It happens less and less now as Google Docs gains more options to put it on par with MS Word’s features. In this blog entry, we’ll explore two exciting updates to G Suite released in May 2019.

Google Docs Update #1: Section Breaks

Docs now allows you to easily insert breaks into your documents. Insert next page or continuous section breaks by going to Insert > Break.

You can view section breaks in your document with the new show section breaks tool. Go to View > Show section breaks. When turned on, Show selection breaks yields  a blue dotted line where you may find each section break.

Why Section Breaks Matter

Many often confuse section breaks with page breaks. With the latter, you get a definite break in the document. Section breaks aren’t like that. They allow for a continuous flow of information in the document. There need not be a page break.

In one word processing document I work on, I often have a need to switch from a portrait-sized page to a landscape one. In MS Word, this was easy to do. You inserted a section break before and after the landscape page. Everything before and after the section break are portrait pages. Between the section breaks, all you see is landscape.

One benefit of section breaks is that you can have different formatting within it.  For example, you can adjust left or right margins in each section (as opposed to for the whole document). Expect to see this new feature around July 4, 2019 at the latest.

G Suite Update #2: AI-Powered Drive

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been sneaking into everything we do, often making things better. Only a few days ago, while calling a restaurant, I said “OK, Google” to my Android phone. When I asked for the restaurant’s hours, Google Assistant prompted me for more. The more? To make reservations for dinner. When I said, “Yes,” Google Assistant took over, placing a phone call to the restaurant. Then it made the reservation and emailed me a confirmation. I was a bit shocked at it’s independent nature, but it made a valuable point. That point being that machine-learning-powered suggestions could have practical life impacts.

And that brings us to Google Drive. One of the common complaints Drive users have is that they can’t find important files. Google is implementing a new Priority page. It relies on machine-learning-powered suggestions to give you exactly what you want. The Drive Priority feature comes with suggested documents and action options. The action options include replying to a comment, reviewing recent edits, and more.

With Priority, you can also see how to group your content together. What does Google call this intelligent grouping? Workspaces. You can right-click content to add to a Workspace, making it a cinch to put stuff in the same content bucket.

Bonus

Oh, and don’t forget that Google Drive has shifted from “Team” Drive to “Shared drives.” Files in Shared drives are owned by the team/group rather than a single person. This can have advantages, but I dislike Shared drives document sharing options. They are complicated compared to regular Google Drive sharing. This complexity may be due to the organizational controls that can be applied to Shared drives.

These fresh updates for Google Docs and Drive continue to enhance their product. More importantly, they make working in Google Docs and Drive easier for users who may still be transitioning from desktop applications to the cloud.

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