Google Drive has been here for sometime now and people are loving it. For using Google Drive to its real potential, we have made a list of 7 simple yet effective google drive tips and tools that can make your its functioning more efficient and easy.

The first and the foremost concern of anybody using the drive is about safety of files, and hence the recovery of any document or file is very crucial. Keeping that in mind, to make the use easy one should create keyboard shortcuts, make folder or tags and much more.. So jump over and see what can this drive achieve.

Google drive tips - drive.google.com

1. Recover Lost Files

One of Google Drive’s best features is that you’ll never lose another file. To see how this works, create a Notepad or Paint file and save it in your Google Drive folder. Wait for Google Drive to sync, then delete the file and remove it from the Recycle Bin. Normally, that would be the last you ever see of it. Now right – click the Google Drive icon in the Taskbar and select ‘Visit your Google Drive on the web’. A browser opens and displays Google Drive. Click the More link on the link on the left. Click the more button at the top and select ‘Restore from bin’. Google Drive will sync again, and the fine will be restored to your PC.

2. Send to Google Drive

Right Click a file in Windows Explorer and you’ll see the Send To command. It enables files to be copied to another location, and you can add Google Drive to the list of locations. Click Start and type %appdata% into the search box. Open the Microsoft/Windows/SendTo folder. Right Click the Google Drive icon on your Desktop and select Copy, then right click in the SendTo folder and select Paste. Now you can right-click any file on your Desktop or in an Explorer window and select Send To, Google Drive

3. Add Google Drive to Libraries

Libraries were introduced in Windows 7 as a way of viewing the contents of two or more folder at the same time. Click Start, Documents, and you see files in My Documents and Public Documents. If you add Google Drive to this, you’ll be able to see all your files in one window.

Click Start, Documents and, under the title at the top, it says: ‘Includes: 2 locations’. Click the ’2 locations’ link and, in the window that appears, click Add. Find and highlight Google Drive and click the include folder. Close the window and you’ll see all your files in one window, whether they’re stored on your PC or on Google Drive.

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4. Create Docs shortcuts

The standard process for creating a new Google Docs document is laborious. You have to go into your browser, type the URL, then click the buttons to create a document. Why not create a Desktop shortcut instead? Right-Click Chrome on the Start Menu and select Properties. Highlight everything in the Target box and press CTRL+C. Right Click your Desktop and select New, Shortcut. Click in the location box and press CTRL+V. Type a space at the end, then type : http://docs.google.com/document/create?h1-en.

Click Next, name it New document and finish. It creates a new Google document in the browser that also appears immediately in your Google Drive folder.

5. Restore everything

Every computer with Google Drive software installed will sync with the online storage space. If you somehow lose all the files on your PC and online, you can always restore everything from a second PC. Make sure the second computer cannot connect to the internet ( by turning off your router, for example ), and boot up. The Google Drive folder will be exactly as it was the last time the computer was used. Now copy the files from the Google Drive folder to another folder, then reboot and connect to the internet. Syncing may wipe the Google Drive folder, but you can copy the files back from the folder you placed them in. They will be synced online and to your other PC too.

6. Access previous versions

Suppose you are editing an image or writing a document. You make some changes and save it. Later you wish you hadn’t made those changes and want to revert to an earlier version of the file. Google Drive stores a new version of a file every time you save t. Go to drive.google.com and find the file you want. Select it and click More, manage Revisions. A list of previous version is displayed. Clicking one saves it to the browser’s default download folder. It can then be opened or moved to wherever you want, even back to Google Drive.

7. Folder or tags

Google Drive started as Google Docs and had ‘collections’ instead of folder. You could attach tags to a file, and have a file with more than one tag, so a file could be in both the Work and Documents collections, for example.

You can still do this. Create two folder in Google Drive on your PC, then go to drive.google.com. Tick a file to select it and click the Organize button. Hold down Ctrl and click all the folders (collection) you want to add it to . Click ‘Apply Changes’. After a few seconds, the file will apear in those folder online and on your PC. You now heave ne file in two different folders.