How to use Google Drive for collaboration

You may think of Google Drive mostly as a cloud storage service, but it also includes a suite of online office apps: Google Docs (word processor), Google Sheets (spreadsheet app), and Google Slides (presentation app). You can use them to collaborate with colleagues on a document, spreadsheet, or presentation in real time or asynchronously. These apps can also be used to import, export, and natively edit Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint and Word documents.

With a Google account, you get free use of these apps and 15GB of free Google Drive storage. For more storage, Google One plans start at $2 per month.

For business use, Google sells several tiers of Google Workspace plans that include more storage as well as enterprise collaboration, security, and administrative tools. These plans start at $6 per user per month. There’s also a Google Workspace Essentials plan for organizations that don’t need hosted email.

Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides work the same among these free and paid plans, but with a few extra features added to the Workspace ones. Unless otherwise noted, this guide covers sharing and collaborating with your documents under a free, personal Google account. Most steps are the same with a Google Workspace account, but note that your administrator may have disabled or limited some capabilities.

Most of this article covers sharing and collaborating via My Drive, the drive controlled by individual users whether they use Google Drive through a personal Google account or a Workspace account. A section at the end covers shared drives, which are available only through Google Workspace accounts.

How to share your document

There are a few different ways to start sharing a file in Google Drive and its related apps:

• On the home screen of Google Drive (also known as My Drive), click to highlight the document, presentation, or spreadsheet that you want to share, then click the Share icon (a head silhouette) on the toolbar at the upper right. (For simplicity’s sake, we’ll say “document” from now on to refer to spreadsheets and presentations as well.)

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• On your My Drive page, right-click the document that you want to share and select Share from the menu that appears.
• To share a document that you’ve opened in Docs, Sheets, or Slides, click the big Share button in the upper-right corner.

Any of the actions above opens the “Share with people and groups” pane, which gives you fine-tuned control over who can see your document and what they can do with it.

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Sharing privately: Only certain people can access your document

In most cases, business users will want to share files privately — that is, restrict access to specific people or groups. Inside the “Add people and groups” box on the Share pane, type in the names or email addresses of the people you want to collaborate with on the document. As you start to type, Google will suggest matches from your contacts; click a name or group to add it. You can also type in a brief message to the recipients.

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By default, every person you add is given Editor access to your document. You can change this by clicking Editor and selecting Viewer or Commenter instead. Here’s how the three permissions break down:

• A Viewer can scroll through and read your document but can’t change it or share it with others.
• A Commenter can view the document and add comments and suggestions to it but can’t change the document itself or share it.
• An Editor can view, comment on, and edit the document (change text, add images, and so on) and share it with others.

Important: Whether you choose Viewer, Commenter, or Editor in the Share pane, keep in mind that this setting applies to all people you’re currently inviting to the document. If you want to give different people different levels of permission, you’ll need to invite them individually or in separate batches, with different access rights assigned each time.

You can also fine-tune these access settings. Click the gear icon in the upper right of the Share pane  to turn off the following items:

• Uncheck the Editors can change permissions and share box if you don’t want those with Editor privileges to be able to share the document with others or change others’ Viewer, Commentor, or Editor status.
• Uncheck the Viewers and commenters can see the option to download, print, and copy box if you don’t want those with Viewer or Commenter access to be able to download, print, or make a copy of your document.

Note: If a person you’re sharing your document with privately has a Google account (such as a Gmail account), they can immediately work on it as a Commenter or Editor as long as they’re signed into their account. Otherwise, they will have to register for a free Google account.

You can change a person’s access to the document at any time. Call up the Share pane, click the button to the right of their name with their access title (Viewer, Commenter, or Editor), and select a different access title from the menu that appears. To revoke the person’s access to the document, click Remove from the menu. When you’ve made a selection, click Save.

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Setting an expiration date for a privately shared document

Under a Google Workspace plan, a person assigned Viewer or Commenter access to your document can be denied access to it on a specified date. If they were assigned as Editor, they will be demoted to Commenter on a specified date.

Open the Share pane. Click the button to the right of a collaborator’s name that shows their access title (Viewer, Commenter, or Editor) and select Give temporary access from the menu that appears. Then, next to “Access expires…,” click the current date and change the number of days that you want that person to have access to your document.

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Sharing publicly: Anyone can access your document

In some cases, you might want to share a document publicly, letting anyone view, edit, or comment on it. In the Share pane, go to the “Get link” area and click “Change to anyone with the link.” A link to your document will be generated that you can copy and paste. Anyone who clicks this link (whether you or someone else shares it with them) will be able to view your document.

By default, the permission for public links is set to Viewer. To allow anyone with the link to comment on or edit your document, click Viewer on the right and select Commenter or Editor.

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Keep in mind that anyone with the public link to your document can access it whether they get the link from you directly, someone else sends it to them, or they find it through some other means. That’s why it’s important to use public links with great caution, especially when assigning Commenter or Editor access to a link.

Unlike with privately shared documents, people collaborating on publicly shared documents don’t need to have a Google account. If they’re not signed in to a Google account when they access the document, they will appear as an anonymous contributor.

You can turn off the public link to your document at any time by reopening the Share pane and clicking “Change” in the “Get link” area. Then click “Anyone with the link” and select “Restricted.”

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Sharing a document from the Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides mobile apps

On the home screen of any Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, or Slides mobile app, tap the three dots to the right of the document’s file name. On the pane that scrolls up, tap Share. This opens the Share screen.

To open the Share screen when you have a document open in the Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides mobile app, tap the Share icon (a head silhouette) at the upper-right corner.

On the Share screen, type in the names or email addresses of people you want to invite to collaborate on your document. As you start to type, Google will suggest matches from your contacts; tap a name or group to add it. You can also type in a brief message. If you want to change the recipients’ access rights from Editor, click the Editor drop-down and choose Viewer or Commenter.

At the bottom of the Share screen, tap anywhere below “Who has access.” This opens a screen that lists who has been given access to your document and their type of access (Viewer, Commenter, Editor). To change their access type, or to remove their access entirely, tap their name.

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To publicly share your document, tap Only people added can open with this link at the bottom of the “Who has access” screen. On the pane that scrolls up, tap to select Viewer, Commenter, or Editor. The text in the “Link” area on the main screen will change to say, “Anyone on the internet with this link can comment” (or “can view” or “can edit,” depending on your selection.) Tap the link and select Copy link to save the link to your phone’s clipboard, which you can paste into an email or message.

Status of your shared documents

On your Google Drive home page, your documents that are being shared with others are marked by an icon of two silhouetted heads to the right of the document name.

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Note: If you have the page set to Grid view, this icon won’t appear with the thumbnail or filename of a shared document.

It’s even easier to find documents that others have shared with you. Along the left side of your Google Drive home page, click Shared with me to see a list of documents that others are sharing with you.

The home screens of the mobile apps also use silhouetted heads to indicate documents you’ve shared.

To see a list of the documents that others are sharing with you in the Google Drive app, tap the silhouetted heads icon at the bottom of the screen. In the Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides apps, tap the three-line icon in the upper-left corner. On the panel that scrolls in, tap Shared with me.

How to collaborate on a document

Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides offer a few different ways for people to work together: comments, direct edits, and suggested edits, with a few extras thrown in for real-time collaboration.

Adding and reviewing comments

You and anyone you’ve assigned to be a Commenter or Editor can add comments to your shared document. To do this, click to place the cursor in the document where you want to make a comment. Alternatively, you can highlight text or an image. Then click the Add comment button (a speech balloon icon with a + symbol) on the toolbar above the document.

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A pane will open to the right of the document. Type in your comment and click the Comment button.

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Comment cards created by you and your collaborators appear along the right side of your document.

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Clicking the speech balloon icon at the upper-right corner (to the left of the Share button) will open a pane that lists all the comments that have been added by you and your collaborators. You can scroll through the comments on this pane to read them, and you and your collaborators can reply to each one with a brief message and/or mark them as resolved.

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Using the Docs, Sheets, and Slides mobile apps to add and review comments

You can add and review comments in the Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides apps for Android. In iOS, you can review comments from all three apps, but only Docs lets you add comments.

To add a comment, with a document open, tap the pencil icon in the lower-right corner. This switches the view of the document to editing mode. Next, tap to put the cursor where you want to insert a comment in the document. Then, tap the + icon on the toolbar at the top of the screen and select Comment from the pane that slides up. Type in your comment and tap the right-arrow icon to insert the comment into the document.

To review all the comments in a document, tap the speech balloon icon that’s on the upper-right corner.

Making direct edits and rolling back edits from other collaborators

You and anyone you’ve assigned to be an Editor can edit your document — add, delete, or revise text, insert images, and so on. (When you’re using the mobile apps, you need to first tap the pencil icon in the lower-right corner to enter editing mode.)

With multiple people editing the same document, it can be difficult to keep track of who’s done what, and you might not agree with all the changes that others have made. That’s where version history comes in. From the menu bar above your document, select File > Version history > See version history.

The “Version history” page shows a listing (on the right side of the screen) of older versions of your document. The entry for each version states the date and time when a revision was made to your document and by whom.

When you click one of these dates, the version of your document that was saved at that time will appear in the main window. (If you want to give an older version of your document a unique name, click its date. You’ll then be prompted to type in words to replace the date.)

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To restore an older version so it becomes the one that you and your collaborators will work on together, click the big Restore this version button at the top of the page.

Suggesting edits in Docs

In Google Docs (but not Sheets or Slides), there’s a better way to keep track of changes made by your collaborators. Ask anyone with Editor status to turn on Suggesting mode by clicking the Editing icon at the right end of the toolbar above the document and selecting Suggesting from the drop-down menu. Anyone who has Commenter rights for a document will automatically be in Suggesting mode when they open it in Docs.

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Under Suggesting mode, any text added to your document by a collaborator appears as on particular color, and each collaborator gets a different color. If they add an image, the border of that image will be the same color as their text color. Anything they delete will have a strikethrough in their assigned color.

Note cards will appear to the right of your document; each lists a change made to your document, who made it, and when the changes happened. To accept the suggestion on a card, click the checkmark; to reject it, click the x.

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To view your document with or without all the edits suggested by your collaborators: From the menu bar, click Tools > Review suggested edits. A box will open at the upper-right corner. To view your document with the suggested edits merged in, click Show suggested edits and select Preview “Accept all” from the drop-down menu. To view without the suggested edits, select Preview “Reject all.”

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If you want to accept or reject all suggestions at once without going through them one by one, you can click the Accept All or Reject All buttons on this pane.

Whenever your document gets a suggested edit by a collaborator, an updated tally appears next to its filename on your Google Drive home page and in the Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides mobile apps. If you’re viewing your Google Drive page in Grid view, this tally appears over the thumbnail of your document.

Collaborating on documents in real time

When you and one or more of your collaborators are viewing a document at the same time, a round icon for each person appears at the upper-right corner. They see your online status as an icon at the upper-right corner of their screen.

You can chat with one another: Click the speech bubble icon (to the right of the icons of your collaborators). This opens a chat window along the right side of your screen.

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Whenever you or your collaborators add comments or make suggestions or edits in the document, the other people see the comments or these actions happen in real time.

How to use shared drives

With most Google Workspace accounts, you can create shared drives. These work like your personal My Drive, but can be accessed and managed by more than one person. Shared drives can be useful for storing and sharing documents that people collaborating on the same project, or working in the same department, need to use.

Creating a shared drive

If your organization supports shared drives, you’ll see a “Shared drives” item in the left column of your Google Drive home screen. To create a new shared drive, click Shared drives > New. A pane opens prompting you to type in a name for your new shared drive. After you click the Create button, this new shared drive appears below “Shared drives.”

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Adding other members to your shared drive

Next, you need to invite other people so that they can access the shared drive. In the left column, double-click your shared drive. Click Manage members at the top of the page. In the pane that opens, enter the names or email addresses of your co-workers. Note that every person must have an account on your Google Workspace team or a Google user account.

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Click the Send button. These co-workers will get an email with a link that lets them access the shared drive.

By default, members you add to a shared drive will have Content manager access, which means they can upload, edit, move, or delete all files in the drive. But you can change the access level assigned to any member of the drive. Reopen the “Manage members” pane. To the right of each person’s name, you can click the Content manager button to open a drop-down menu to change the access level for that person. You can choose from Manager, Content manager, Contributor, Commenter, and Viewer.

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There are several differences among these titles. (Google lists them in a handy table.) Managers have full control over documents and other people’s access to the shared drive. Viewers can only view documents and open folders in your shared drive. The other three roles fall in between, with varying degrees of control over the drive and its contents.

Any member of the shared drive can access any document stored in it, and (depending on their access levels) multiple members can add documents and folders to the shared drive, making it more manageable for groups than sharing documents from personal My Drives.

Sharing documents (or folders) in a shared drive with non-members

Sometimes you want to share a document or folder with people outside the team — without giving them access to the whole shared drive. Sharing a document or folder in a shared drive with somebody who is not a member is mostly the same process described earlier for sharing a document in My Drive. The main differences to keep in mind are these:

1. To share a document in a shared drive, you or a member of your shared drive must have at least Contributor access level. To share folders, you or the other member must have Manager access.
2. Whether you share a folder privately with a non-member or create a publicly accessible web link to it, you can choose one of these user access levels for it: Viewer, Commenter, Contributor, or Content Manager.

For more information about working with shared drives, see Google’s “Get started with shared drives” page.

This article was originally published in October 2017 and most recently updated in March 2021.