Top 7 Google Drive Time Saving Tips for Productivity 2021
In this article, I’m sharing my top 7 Google Drive time saving tips. And I bet you there are a few productivity tips you didn’t even know you could do! Are you ready for the best Google Drive tips for productivity? Then let’s go!
Search Drive from Address Bar
Search Drive from your address bar! That’s right, search for and open a file without even opening your Drive first. From any tab in Chrome, simply type Drive then press tab and search for whatever it is you want to open from your Google Drive. Then hit enter, and voila. Your file is opened and you didn’t even have to go into drive first. Now, if you’re a regular around these parts – these parts being my article – you’ll know this is actually a Google Chrome tips that works for other sites too. Don’t worry, I’ve linked to that Chrome article below. Now if you try this tip and it doesn’t work, you may have to enable it in your Chrome settings. Here’s how.
From a Chrome tab, head to the 3 dot menu icon and select Settings. Then select ‘search engine’ on the left, and from here select ‘manage search engines’.
Under default search engines, click ‘add’ and here’s where you’d add Google Drive as the search engine, with the drive as the keyword, then add in this search string – which I have linked for you below. Just click add, and you’re all set.
By the way, if you’re new to Drive and you’re looking for an article on how to use Google Drive, I have an article walking you through all of that and plus, I’ve linked to an article featuring even more Google Drive time-saving tips.
Use Advanced Search
This is really handy if you can’t remember the name of a specific file or document.
From your drive, head up to the search bar and click the dropdown arrow to the right to bring up your advanced search.
If you remember the type of file you’re searching for you can add that here to help narrow it down, and if you know who created it, that’s helpful.
Then under item, just type in whatever you can remember. Even part of a title here. Then just hit enter and voila, Google Drive does the search work for ya.
Convert Images to Text
This is one of my favorite tips! I’ve told you all about this tip before, but let’s do it one more time for the cheap seats in the back! That’s to Convert any images into text! That’s right, as in, extract text from any image or pdf. So here I’ve taken this screenshot of a really good cookie recipe.
So I want to write out this recipe, not just have an image of it. Though I can comment on this image, I can’t actually grab the text to copy and paste it over into a doc.
I don’t want to waste time and re-write out this recipe from this scratch – I just want to use the text I see in this picture.
So, I’ll close out of the full-screen preview and right-click on the image to select open with, Google Docs.
So this opens a brand new Google Docs tab and you’ll have the image file at the top of the doc, but scroll down below that, and oh, hello! Would you look at that? All the text from the image is right here in an editable format. Yes, please!
This time-saving trick will work with any photo that has text because Google is using optical character recognition or OCR technology.
Change Your Default Apps
This is a Google Drive mobile app tip! From your Drive app on your phone, select the menu and tap on settings.
From here, select default apps. Here, you can change all the default apps that open from links in Drive. There’s browser options, mail options, map options and calendar options too.
Enable Offline Sync
This is going to be really helpful if you have to edit something while on the go, regardless of your internet connectivity.
From your Drive, click the setting gear and select settings. From here, you’ll notice an ‘offline’ option.
Make sure this is toggled on as this is what will allow you to create, view, and edit your docs, sheets, slides, and any other files while offline.
So let’s say your traveling and you don’t have wifi, you can continue to work on that document from the device you’ve enabled offline sync from, and everything will automatically update when you get back on wifi.
Find and Insert Links within Drive
Find and insert links without even leaving the file you’re working in. Yes, you can do that too. So let’s say you’re working on a file and you want to easily find and insert a hyperlink.
Sure, you could open another tab and search for the website and then copy it and come back over to your file, but that would take way too long. Instead, simply highlight the word, right-click and select the link.
Now, there’s a few things to pay attention to here. First, Google will give suggestions for sites based on what it is that you’re trying to hyperlink.
So, if it’s something it recognizes, you’ll have those pulled up here first. So, if that happens to be what you want, that’s great and you can select that and it’ll automatically add that link for you.
But, you can also search for a site right here too by simply typing in what it is you’re looking for and making the selection right from here. And we have come to the end of the line.
Automatic substitutions
Now I know what you’re thinking: what the heck does that mean? Well, that’s what I’m here for! To tell you what it means! So, if you’re anything like me and you make the same errors while typing by constantly hitting the wrong keys over and over again – whoopsie – you’ll want to enable Drive to set automatic substitutions.
As in, whoops I didn’t mean that, I meant that. So from any file, you’re working on in Drive, head on up to the tools menu. And from here, select preferences.
In your preferences pop-up, there’s a substitutions tab. Go ahead and click that and now right at the top, we’ll make sure our automatic substitutions is toggled on.
But here is not only where you can add your own substitutions, but you can also see what already exists – kind of like hidden keyboard shortcuts within Drive.
Also Read: How to Share Google Drive Files and Folders 2021
So there’s your quick shortcut for the copyright symbol, arrows, fractions, trademark cymbal, and more. You can change any of these too by the way if you want, you can toggle any on or off, or you can delete them altogether.
But, let’s stay focused and add one in ourselves. So, for example, I often type don’t wrong. So I’ll put in what I sometimes type by mistake and I’ll tell Drive to replace it with the proper spelling.
Once you’re done, select OK and you’re all set. Remember, if you want even more Google Drive tips for productivity, be sure to check out all the links below. Warning: there’s a lot of tips!
So those are my top 7 Google Drive time saving tips. What do you think of these productivity tips? Have any favorites? Let everyone know in the comments below. As always, thank you so much for reading.
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