Thursday, April 3, 2014

Sharing a Google Doc With Specified & Unspecified People

When it comes to getting eyeballs onto a Google Doc (including Presentations and Spreadsheets), there are two main paths to follow: Publishing, and Sharing. See our tutorial on publishing a Google Doc here.

When you think of sharing a Google Doc, there are a lot more options and features, compared to the old email attachment method. I am writing this tutorial in the context of a student sharing a doc with their instructor and other classmates, but the concept can be easily applied to a number of office procedure scenarios where an online document needs to be efficiently shared among people. Also, this is just an overview, so be sure to explore the features and benefits of the options we don't cover here; there are some great tools there! Here goes:

1. When you are viewing the Google Doc in question, click the blue "Share" button in the upper right:


2. This brings up the "Share with others"dialog box. Click "Get shareable link"



3. Click the "Anyone at Linn-Benton Communit…" area, then click "More…" at the bottom of the dropdown menu:


4. "Anyone with the link" is a good way to share most docs in an LMS course. That won't require students to be logged in to their Google Apps for Ed account to view it.


Note that "Can view" is the default Access setting, but you can also choose to give people editing or commenting privilege. NOTE: "Can comment" is non-editing.


5. Click the "Save" button at the bottom, and the link will be ready to copy to the clipboard:


6. Paste that link into your Moodle course, email message, etc., and people will be able to access the live document!



Ok, now we will branch off a little to show how to share with a specified person(s). Take a look at the screenshot in step 2, the "Sharing settings" dialog. Here it is again, after clicking in the "Invite people" field:



When you start typing names in the field, note how people's names start to appear. Be sure to select the correct email address, as many employees have both a staff- and student-formatted account:




Decide among the various sending options, and click the blue "Send" button.


And that's how you share a Google Doc with specific people!

We would love to know how you share Google Docs, so feel free to share via a comment below!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

NICE 'how-to' Paul! I love Google Docs -- and Google is adding cool new features all the time!! But there are a couple things an LBCC employee should keep in mind when using and sharing Google Docs:

1) when you quit or retire, your Google Apps for Ed account eventually gets deleted -- with all your docs, contacts, etc, so someone needs to change ownership of important docs (and export contacts, etc) before that happens

1) Google does not guarantee any 'backup/restore' process in the event of a catastrophic event, so always think 'backup' when critical documents are involved

Nothing insurmountable, but important none-the-less.

Shelly