Google Drive

 Using Gmail for home or business is an easy way to gain access across all your devices to your family, friends, or work. Gmail is adaptable and can be on a smart phone or computer or even a smart TV. When you make a new Gmail account, you also gain what is called Google Drive. This drive is a cloud based storage system that is free with every Gmail account. You can keep videos, pictures, articles, spreadsheets, and so much more inside this free space hosted by Google. All Google account holders have access to Drive, Photos, Gmail, Maps and Calendar. But today, we are talking about Drive.

To get to your drive, simply open your web browser and click on the 9 dots by your photo. You'll see the Drive icon looks like a triangle with the traditional Google colors. 
You'll land on what Google calls "My Drive" or "Home". Either of those options are good to begin with. Inside this drive you can click around and create folders to store your things, share drive items with other users, create a workspace, look at your recent activity, or see shared drives that were shared to your Gmail account.
Clicking on New will give you a menu to create a new folder, upload a file or folder, create a new document, spreadsheet, slide presentation, forms, or more.
The only way to learn all of these things is to click around and start trying! But what if you need to access your Drive and the internet is out? This is a great question! The solution is Drive for Desktop. Google has created a way for you to access your drive without having to worry whether the internet is available. It will sync up your entire drive regularly and you don't have to worry about losing your progress.

To install Google Drive for Desktop:

In your Drive, click on the gear icon next to your 9 dots and Google login photo.
Select "Get Drive for Desktop"
This will take you to a separate page where the link will show up. Click on "Download drive for desktop" and the download will automatically begin.


Once it is finished downloading, open the file from your downloads and follow the prompts. The prompts will help you figure out whether you want to install it on the desktop or not (as an icon), how you want to backup your items, and where you want it to look for items to save. Once you've gone through those prompts, it will ask you if you want to open your drive.

Now that it is installed, lets look at it on the computer:
Find the icon on your desktop and double click it to open. If the icon is not there, open your file folder in your task bar:
Go to This PC:

Double click This PC and open Google Drive:

Now that your drive is open,  you can click through it like a regular file folder on your computer. 

You can open files and move them around and the Google Drive sync running in the background will make sure your online drive matches your desktop drive.

To make things even easier, you can also access these files when the internet isn't available. To do that, you need to open your Google drive in your browser, click the gear in the top right hand corner like before, and go to settings:
In settings, scroll all the way down to the bottom:
Select the box that says "Offline". This then will take a moment to sync your files for offline use.

As long as you have a word document program on your computer, you'll be able to edit and create files in your Google Drive for Desktop any time you want! (Microsoft Office Suite or Libre Office)

And when you're downloading files? Redirect the downloads to your Google Drive and it will automatically save it on your desktop drive and your browser drive so you can access it anywhere.

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