Hi everyone, Kevin here. Today I want to show
you how you can both get and also use Google Drive. First off, what is Google Drive and why
would you ever want to use it? Google Drive is a cloud storage provider. If you've ever
used Apple's iCloud or Microsoft's OneDrive, this is Google's version of it. But still, what
does it mean to be a cloud storage provider. Well, typically when you work on, let's say, a document
on your computer, you'll save it on your computer. So, you have a local copy. With Google Drive,
you can save it on Drive and that's basically Google's computer, so you're saving it
elsewhere. Now, Google doesn't call their computers computers. They're called servers and
they keep them in data centers all over the world, but you might be wondering why would I ever want
to do that? What are the benefits? Well, there are many benefits to storing files in Google Drive.
First off, your files are backed up, so let's say something were to happen to your computer
at home. Well, when you store it in Drive, there are many copies on many different
servers all over the world. Another benefit, you can access your files wherever you are. Let's
say you're traveling, maybe you're in Europe, maybe you're in Africa, wherever you happen
to be, if you could get onto the Internet, you can get to your files. Also, another benefit
is Google's really good at search. That's what they're known for. Now with Google Drive, you
can search for anything. It could be text within a photo, it could be just a description of the
photo you took, it could be four specific files. Their search will get that file extremely fast.
Lastly, and one of the biggest benefits of working on files that you have stored in the cloud is
that you can work with others on that file. In the past, if you wanted to work with others, you'd
have to e-mail to them. Then they'd e-mail it back and then you'd probably get different versions.
With Google Drive, you simply share a link and then you can all work on the same file together.
So, there are lots of benefits to working in the cloud. Why don't we jump on the PC now and see
how we can start taking advantage of Google Drive. You can access Google Drive across all of your
different devices. You can get it on the web, on your PC, and on mobile and I'll briefly
show you how you can get it across all of these different devices. By far one of the most
popular ways to access Google Drive is on the web. To access Drive on the web, you can simply
type in drive.google.com, and that will drop you directly in Google Drive. Alternatively,
when you're on any Google product on the web, up in the top right-hand corner, you have
what's called the waffle menu. See it kind of looks like a waffle. When you click on that,
this shows you all of your different Google Apps. There's one over here called Drive. It kind of
has a triangle icon. You can simply click on that. If you want quicker access in the future,
you can also click on the icon and drag it to a more prominent position. There, now it's even
easier to get back to Google Drive. You can also install Google Drive on your PC. The benefit of
this is you can access all of your Google Drive files from a folder on your PC. You can also set
up your PC to synchronize files and folders with Google Drive automatically. To get the backup
and sync tool, simply go to the top right-hand corner and click on the settings gear. Within the
settings gear, click on get Drive for desktop. On the next page, scroll down and you'll see a
download option for the backup and sync tool. Later on in this tutorial, we'll walk through
how backup and sync works. Lastly, you can also get Google Drive on your phone, if you use an
iPhone, head to the App Store. If you're on an Android phone, head to the PlayStore. Within
the App Store, I'll click on search and within the search field simply search for Google Drive.
Once you finish searching for Google Drive, here you'll see a result for Google Drive. If you don't
have it yet, you can click on install. In my case I already have it, so I'll simply click on open.
Here we are now in Google Drive on the web, and this is likely the interface that you will end up
using most often, and by the way, congratulations, you now have your very own cloud storage account.
In the introduction, it might have sounded a little bit intimidating, but it's actually really
easy to set up. Now within Google Drive, likely the first thing that you'll want to do is to put
one of your files into the cloud, so you can start taking advantage of all of those benefits that
I called out, and by far the easiest way to get a file into the cloud is to simply select a file
from your computer, and then you could simply drag and drop it into Google Drive. You have a Word
document, and I'll let go of it and here you see it uploads now into the cloud. Along with
uploading individual files, maybe you have an entire folder that you'd like to put into Google
Drive, well, you can upload it the exact same way. Here I have a folder from my PC, and once again,
I'll simply drag and drop it onto Google Drive, and here it’ll upload the entire folder into
Drive. Getting content in is very easy. Up in the top left-hand corner, I also have this big
and prominent new button. When I click on this, here too, I can upload an individual file and I
can also upload a folder, so just another way to get content up. I don't just have to start working
from existing content on my PC. Down below, I could also start new blank documents, sheets,
slides, and there are many other types of Google content that I could start creating. Now let's say
I don't want to create a blank document; I could also hover over this arrow, and I could start from
a template. Up on top of this menu, there's the option to create a new folder. Just like any other
File Manager, you can use folders to organize all of your content. I'm going to go ahead and
create a folder. This opens up a prompt to name my folder. I'm going to call this financials. Once
I'm all done, I'll click on create. Here now I see my new folder. To organize content, just like any
other File Manager, I can click on one of my files and press and hold and I can drop it in folders to
start organizing content. Along with the new menu, I can also simply access it by right clicking.
When I right click, this opens up the same exact menu, so once again, Google makes it extremely
easy to get your content into Google Drive. I now have many of my different files showing up
within Google Drive. The benefit is these files are now backed up and I can access these from
anywhere. One of the other massive benefits of Google Drive is I can very easily get back to any
of my files, and the first way to do that is using the search field up here. When I search, I could
search for content within files, and it's not just limited to documents. I could search within PDFs
and also within images. Here for example, I have a PDF with the text FY21Q1. When I search, here I
see both a document and a PDF, so it could search within PDFs. Back on the search results, let's say
that I wasn't able to find what I'm looking for. Over on the right-hand side of the search field,
I can expose additional search options and here I can set different filters to help me find the file
that I'm looking for. Search is all well and good, but sometimes you don't know exactly what you're
looking for, and that's where Quick Access comes in. This surfaces all of the documents and all of
the content that's most relevant to you. So, let's say that maybe someone just shared a document
with you, or maybe you open a document a lot. Google looks at all of these different signals of
how you interact with your documents, and then it recommends the most relevant documents to you, and
here I see this PDF file. I just opened it and I probably want to go back to it. Here I see it's in
the first position of Quick Access, so once again, these are benefits with search, Quick Access, that
you wouldn't get with just documents on your PC. Down below, I see the core of the Google Drive
experience. Here I see all of my different files and I see all of my different folders, and
just like we looked at before, I could organize, drag-and-drop the files wherever I want to
organize this view how I want it. Along with being able to organize the files, I can also adjust this
view to help me find what I'm looking for. Here for instance, right now it's organized by the
name. I can also organize it by last modified if I'd rather see it in a different sort order. I
could also change the way all of these files are visualized. Up in the top right-hand corner, I can
toggle between the list view, which I currently have, and the grid view, which is a more visual
way of getting back to your files. Within Drive, if I select one of my files, I'll see additional
controls appear across the top. Let's briefly walk through what you can do with these. The first
one is get link. This allows you to generate a link that you can then share with others so they
can also access the file. Down below, you can set permissions on the file. Right next to that,
there's also another way you could share a file and you can share with specific individuals. Now
you could toggle back and forth between getting a link and then also sharing with people or groups.
Here too, when you click on the settings gear, you could set your permissions on the file when
you share it. Once I share a file with someone, here I'll see the shared icon appear next to
the title, indicating that this file has been shared. Back on top and next to the sharing icons,
I also have the option to preview a file. Not only can I preview a file, but I have some additional
controls. I can comment on a file, I could print it, or I could download the file back to my PC.
Moving along, I can also remove a file if I want to delete it and then I have a context menu with
additional actions that I can take on a file. The last icon up here is the details icon. When I
click on there, I can see all the details related to the file and most importantly I could see all
of the activity. Right now, I just uploaded this file, but once I start sharing it and working with
others, additional activity will show up in here. Once again, Google Drive provides many different
ways to get to the most popular actions. Here when I have the file selected, I can go up here, but I
can also simply right click on the file, and this will show a menu with additional actions. Now
some of the more interesting ones in this list, I can add it to start, and when I add it to
start, it’ll show up within the starred category. In a moment, we'll take a look at how that
works, and for now I'll simply star the file. Back within the menu, I can also manage versions.
Let's say that I'm working with others on, let's say, a document, or a presentation, I can
go back to previous versions if let's say some changes happened that I didn't want. Just like
with files, I can also select a folder and then right click on the folder and that will expose
a similar context menu. Here too, I could star folders and interestingly, I could also change the
color to help me find this folder more easily. For folders as well, I can even go ahead and share an
entire file, so let's say I'm working with a team and we all want to share files with one another,
I can set up a folder and then I could share the folder with others, and we could all drop our
files there. Now that we've looked at some of the core file management capabilities, let's shift
our attention over on the left-hand side where we have these different views. By default, I'm in the
My Drive view, and the My Drive view shows me all of my content, so here I see my main root folder
or the main My Drive view, and underneath that, I see all of the subfolders that I have. Now
down below, I have an option called computers. This will only show up if you set up the get
Drive for desktop app, otherwise you won't have the computers option. This allows you to see
any of the files that you've synced onto Drive from your computer. The next option is shared
with me and just like the name implies, I can see any folders or any files that others have shared
with me on this list. Now one of the nice things is you might have files in here that have been
shared with you, but you want to be able to see that file within your My Drive view. What's nice
here is I can simply right click on an option and within here, I can add a shortcut to Drive. This
opens up a prompt and I can define where I want the shortcut to show up. I'll add it to My Drive
and then click on add shortcut. When I go back to the My Drive view, here I see the shortcut to this
shared folder. So, in a sense it's almost like having my own folder. This is especially helpful
if let's say you're working on a group project and all of you are contributing to one folder,
you can have everyone add a shortcut to that folder within their My Drive view. That way it's
extremely easy to access. Under shared with me, there's the recent view and this shows me all
of the recent files that I've interacted with. So, whether it's because I opened a file, maybe
I uploaded a file, or maybe I modified a file. Anytime I interact with a file, it’ll show up
on this recent list. Now you'd be surprised, but typically when you're working on files, you'll
go back again and again to the files that you've worked on recently. This is an extremely valuable
view. Next, we have the starred view and any file or folder that I star shows up here, so this is in
a sense like pinning a document. If it's a, say, a document or a file that you go back to often, you
could star it, that way you have easy access to it. The last view I have here is my trash and when
I click on this, I could see all of my different folders and files that I've recently deleted, and
after 30 days, they'll be automatically deleted, but here too, I could also empty the trash
proactively. At the very bottom, I can also look at my storage, and when I click into storage,
I get this helpful view showing me what files are using up most of my storage. Now one thing that's
interesting, you'll notice that PowerPoint files, Word documents, or graphics, they all consume
some of my storage space. However, all of the Google file formats, whether it's Docs, Sheets,
or Slides, you'll notice that they use up 0 bytes. I've always thought it would be interesting
if I simply created presentations with all of my photos, that wouldn't use up any Google
Drive space. Now that we've looked at how you can use Google Drive on the web, I also
want to show you how you can use Google Drive on your desktop with the backup and sync
app. Once you install the backup and sync app, you'll see a few extra things on your desktop.
Here I have a new folder called Google Drive. When I click on this, this will show me all of
the different files that I have in Google Drive, and I can access all of them directly from
my desktop using File Explorer. I also have another folder called Marketing Flyers, and I've
set this up to sync with Google Drive. You'll see a green check mark here and this indicates
that this folder is also synced in Google Drive. Along with the folders on my desktop. I also have
a new icon in my system tray for the backup and sync app. When I click on this, I can see all
of the files that have synced with Google Drive. When I hover over, I could very quickly share
those files, just like I could on the web. Up above, I have some quick shortcuts to view
all of my Google Drive files in File Explorer. I can also view them on the web or within
Google Photos. When I click on the ellipses, let's go down to preferences to see what we
can do there. Within preferences, I can define what folders that I want to sync with Google
Drive. Here earlier, I showed you my Marketing Flyers folder and there's this green check
mark here. Here I've indicated that I want to sync this folder with Google Drive. Over on the
left-hand side, I can also click on Google Drive and here I have it set up so whatever files I have
in Google Drive also get synced with my computer, so before I walk through a few different ways I
could get files into Google Drive, by dragging and dropping, or simply creating on the web, instead
I can also have Google Drive do all of that for me and whatever files I have on my computer will
be automatically synced with Google Drive, so I really don't have to do anything to back
up my content. Lastly, I want to show you how you can use Google Drive on your phone. Here I
have Google Drive open, and it's mainly focused on getting back to and viewing files. Here
at the top, I have access to Drive search, and just like on the web, I can very quickly
and easily find whatever file I'm looking for. Here I have the Quick Access where I see some
of the files that I've recently interacted with. Down below, I can view all of my starred files
right here, so just another way to get back to the files that I care about. I can also click
on shared with me and here I get a quick view of all of the files that have been shared with me.
Lastly, if I click on files, this is the My Drive view where I can see all of my files directly
within the app, so this is another nice way to get back to your files regardless of where you are
just using your phone. All right, well that was a quick look at how you can start using Google
Drive. If this video helped you, please give it a thumbs up. To see more videos like this in
the future, please hit that subscribe button. If you want to see me cover any other topics in the
future, leave a comment down below. All right, that's all I had for you today. I hope you
enjoyed, and I hope to see you next time. Bye.
