Are you one of those folks who write stuff and need other folks to have access to what you write? Boocoos of us fall into that category; students, teachers, writers, editors, teams in all sorts of businesses, healthcare workers, indie biz owners and employees, on and on. If you’re around here often, you already know I’m a big fan of Google Drive and the Google Office Suite tools. Among those tools is Google Docs, which is the focus of this edition. I serve as primary webmaster for about five sites. I backup and assist as needed for many others. Beyond the website management, I often help edit the content that is placed on them. Although I’ve shaved a several inches off of the mountain of emails I receive daily by using time-saving tools, I’ve further minimized incoming emails of writer’s drafts by helping most of the ones I work with get familiar with Google Drive folders. Google Drive folders have been enormously successful in keeping drafts and completed documents organized. They also help to vastly reduce the amount of emails I receive. It’s very easy to lose track of important emails when they seem to arrive in herds throughout the day. Between Slack and Google Drive folders, much of the former has been eliminated. Google Drive wasn't a challenge for many of my colleagues to try out. The greater challenge has been in utilizing Google Drive folders to write drafts in, as opposed to starting a draft in a singular Google doc. “It’s like herding cats!” per Vicki Warner of WarnerWordsGoogle Drive can be at least a bit of a challenge to get familiar with. Part of that is due to consistent development by Google coders to keep adding new tools to it, while keeping it user friendly. On the bright side, once a basic understanding of how to work with it is developed, it becomes one of the best virtual secretaries there ever was. Just beginning a draft with Google Docs doesn't cut the clutter. That only makes for loads of individual loose docs hanging out inside your Google Drive staging area. If you're getting multiple documents shared with you, sometimes related to many different projects, then you've only replaced email clutter with GDocs clutter. Here’s a screenshot of Google Docs. My Google Docs page--just a bare scraping of the tip of a virtual document iceberg! There's honestly no need to trade one for the other. By starting a document inside Google Drive, the problem is solved. Here's a look inside my Google Drive’s “Shared with me” area... Nice. Neat. Organized. Stress free! Clicking on the blue “New" button (top left of the Google Drive stating area) will give you the option of making new folder, a new document, sheet (nearly identical to Microsoft’s Excel sheets), or several other tools you might want to work with. A further look... Below is an image showing you inside a specific Google Drive folder owned by a colleague. The colleague, another writer, shared this folder with me and granted me editor's privileges on it for easier collaboration on projects. All those little folder icons represent an individual sub-folder housed within a main folder. This colleague collaborates with me on several different projects. Imagine the amount of independent documents we’d both have to manage if they weren’t housed in folders and sub-folders, just like in a real-world filing cabinet. These folders can be shared with whomever the owner (or I) wants to share them with. Also, the the sharing can include an entire folder, or be limited to a single doc, or multiple docs. Further, the access to any of them can be big or small. Depending on the owner’s preference, they can allow others to... ✅Read only ✅Read and comment ✅Read, comment, edit and share If ever you wondered how I can easily move from one task to another, that involves working with other writers, now you know. This is a major part of how I keep up in a free and easy to use method. It works both on and offline, and I can work with it at my desk on my laptop, my smart phone or my tablets. Some of those folders house drafts of blog editions. Others house book manuscripts, both whole and chapter by chapter, with track sheets to let everyone involved with working on them know what’s been finished, what needs done, and by when. It’s amazing how easily all this stuff becomes neatly organized into these little virtual folders. The contents can be worked with by folks all over the world, even at the same time. Live chat with other users, noting and comment options are available, right inside each document. Questions? Lemme know. I’m happy to share whatever I’ve learned to help you knock out your own task list in an easier, faster fashion. This is not a fail-safe to prevent all errors and loss of content or communication, however, it does vastly minimize the risk. ShoutOutsThe Wrap!That's it for this one!
Thank you again for your visit and participation with flashPress and the pro bloggers and vloggers in the indie biz community. You're awesome and we appreciate you! God bless you, thank and hope to have you back next week. femmeflashpoint
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June 2018
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