printing

Dear TCEA Responds:

What’s the easy way to select Google Drive documents and print them all? Is there a way to select more than one and print without having to open each individual document?

-Ross

Dear Ross:

There are several ways to do this. Let’s explore two options, depending on the type of file you want to print. Before we do that, let’s review a few key things about file-saving, organizing, and more. You never know when this info will come in handy.

Types of Files

As you know, there are various file formats you can store in Google Drive. Did you know you can store individual files up to five terabytes in size? But there are some file limits you need to be aware of:

• Google Docs-formatted files cannot exceed 50 megabytes.
• Images inserted into documents cannot be greater than 50 megabytes.
• You can insert JPGs, PNGs, and non-animated GIFs.
• You can’t convert any presentation file larger than 100 megabytes.

You can view many file types in G Suite. Of course, you can save Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel files and you can also open and edit those files. To make MS Office Suite an unnecessary install, try the Chrome extension, Office Editing for Docs, Sheets and Slides.

You can find a list of file types that Google lets you view; here are a few of the complete list that you might want to print:

• TXT
• DOC, DOCX, XLS, XLSX, PPT, PPTX
• PDF
• PAGES
• TIFF, SVG

Unfortunately, for Microsoft Publisher users, PUB files are not available. Neither are ebook-format files such as ePub. Most file printing focuses on MS Office and Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files stored in Drive. Adobe’s PDF files have become universal storage repositories for our data. Consider how many people save their Gmail to PDF files just because they want a hard copy.

Saving Gmail to PDF in Drive

While not many people save their Gmail as PDFs, there are some times when it might come in hand. This might be when you need to capture content for an open records request or for documentation purposes. It also works great when you want to print a large group of Gmails. CloudHQ offers a Chrome extension that you can use, Save Emails to Google Drive. Need to save Gmail file attachments to Google Drive? Try an IFTTT recipe or app for that.

Finding Files in Drive

A common complaint that precedes most print jobs is how to find files you need in Google Drive. While you can get better at organizing your Google Drive (as well as for others), there are options. One possibility is to use Quick Search for Google Drive. This extension makes it easy to use your omnibar in your Chrome/Chromium browser.

You type “drive” and then whatever you are looking for in Drive. Even if you’re not in Drive, but logged in, you can search. It looks like this when you type “drive,” press space, and then your keyword(s):

Another search tool you can use is OmniDrive, which works in a similar way. Solutions like Google File Stream make it easy to use your desktop’s search tools to find files.

Printing Files Stored in Google Drive Files

If you are in a work environment (e.g. G Suite EDU), then you may have the need to print files you have stored in Google Drive. These are files that you have not converted to the native Google document format (e.g. Docs, Slides, Sheets).  This approach will only work with MS Office suite native-formatted files (e.g. DOCX, PPTX, XLSX), images (e.g. JPG, PNG) and PDFs.

If you are in a Windows environment, you can use Google File Stream. Select the files via Google File Stream, then right-click and choose PRINT. Your printing problem is solved.

Printing Google Document-Formatted Files

If you need to print Google document formatted files such as GSHEET, GDOC, or GSLIDES, then take advantage of Kami’s Split and Merge tool. You can access it via your browser.

Your goal is to create a single PDF file of ALL the files you want to print in Google Drive. Kami allows you to select the files you want; then you can click their EXPORT ALL button to get a single PDF file. You’ll be able to save that PDF file to your computer or Google Drive.

Step 1: Login to Google via Kami’s screen, then let it to access all your Google Drive files. 

Step 2: Select all the files you want to merge into one PDF. It won’t matter if they are GDOCs, GSHEET, or GSLIDES. You’ll also be able to add files from your desktop or Google Drive.

Step 3: Export All

Once Kami has put all the files together, it will ask you to pick and choose what specific pages you want to combine (see image below). This can be great if you want to create a customized file with elements from various files. You drag the pages you need into the grey bar below.

If you don’t need that, then keep it simple and click the EXPORT ALL (red button) in the top right corner of the web page. It will then give you a file you can download to your computer or save to Google Drive. Or you can open it in Kami Split and Merge for further manipulation.

Printing documents from Google Drive doesn’t have to be a tedious job. Use these tips to get you going quickly.