Google Drive is useful as an external archive space or to share files. But just like a physical storage space, it quickly becomes a mess. Does your Google Drive look like a crowded filing cabinet? Then make an effort of the organization. With the tips in this article, you can clean up your Google Drive to get your overview back.
List view
You decide how you get folders and files in Google Drive on the screen: in list or grid view. If you go for the list view, you can set the line spacing. To do this, click on the gear where you have the setting Density . In this selection menu you set the density of the list lines Compact, Spacious or Very spacious.
Many users focus on the center of the screen when they want to organize files in Google Drive. It is better to follow the left navigation bar to organize your folders and to reserve the center of the screen to view the contents of the selected folder.
Organize
Are there many documents in your Google Drive that are not neatly stored in folders? Then you know that something is wrong. That way you make it difficult for others, especially in an organization. So work with subfolders; that helps to divide your files into smaller specific groups. Always use a meaningful unique name that is short and sweet so that no confusion can arise. And make sure you are consistent in the way you name folders and files.
If you can start a folder with a number or number, don’t miss that opportunity. This automatically organizes your folders visually. Be careful with spaces and punctuation marks. So don’t use Photos from 2019 but 2019_Fotos. You can use one folder for unsorted files, but avoid it as much as possible. Such a folder Allerlei quickly becomes the next junk box.
Colors
In Google Drive, all folders are shown in gray by default, but you can add 24 colors to your folders. Right-click on a folder in the sidebar or main window and use the command Change color. Then select the desired color. Since the folder names refer to the content, you can use the colors for another dimension. Folders or subfolders that contain work that you have now finished, for example, are quietly grayed out. But, for example, you make folders in which you work green. If you want to get to your current affairs quickly, select the green folders.
If you work with shared folders that are intended for different groups, you can create a yellow folder for team yellow and a red folder for team red. Or you can color your download folders or your personal folders. Maybe it makes sense that every project gets a different color?
With star
At the top left, Google Drive lists the categories: My Drive, Shared with me, Recent, and Starred. Star documents you use often. You do this by right-clicking on a document. Such a star saves you searching again.
In addition, stars are useful to indicate which documents you still have to finish. Remove the star when the work is finished. If you forget this, even the list of star files can fill up quickly.
Free up Google Drive spaciously
Google was one of the pioneers among cloud storage services that crossed the 10 GB free storage threshold. Now every user has 15 GB of free storage. That sounds great, but if you upload large video files, many high-resolution photos and bulky PDF files, you will notice that this quota is also finite. Google also has its own way of calculating the storage capacity used. That 15GB limit not only applies to everything in your Drive, but also to all your messages and attachments in Gmail.
All the more reason to regularly clean your mailboxes and to remove large attachments. You can view the details of your storage on the Google drive storage website. However, the documents you create with Google Docs, Slides, and Sheets don’t count toward your Google Drive storage. So you keep your Google Drive slim by working in Google’s native format.
The way you use Google Photos is also important to stay within the 15GB limit. If you use Google Photos, you can save the photos to via the settings High Quality (2048 x 2048 pixels) instead of Origineel. This allows you to store unlimited photos. The same goes for videos if you allow Google to compress them to 1080p (full HD).
When you have an overview of the available space and the data you have saved, you can start cleaning. Select the section My Drive and switch to the list view. At the bottom left you can see how much storage space you use now. Because Google does not count the files that others share with you for your quota, it is best to ask which files are really your own. Therefore, use the search function and click in the search box on the arrow pointing downwards, so that you see the box Owner the option Owned by me can select. Click the blue button Search and you get a list of homemade files. Delete the documents you no longer need.
Since you are now in organization mode, immediately throw away the things you no longer use. When you delete a file from Google Drive, it moves to the trash. All files in the recycle bin stay there and take up storage space until you empty the recycle bin.
If the document you are deleting is a file that someone else shares with you, the file will only be deleted by yourself. If it is a document that you share with others, those others will also lose access to the document if you delete it from yourself. Drive does not show a confirmation message when you delete files, but you do get the chance to undelete with the button Undo.
Copy of shared documents
View the category Shared with me. Here, too, can be a mess of files and folders. You can move such a shared file to any folder on Google Drive. For this you use the command via the right mouse button Move to. But keep in mind that such a shared file always remains the property of the original owner. He or she can always erase it and then it disappears with you. If it is a file that you really don’t want to lose, you can make a copy of this file for safety’s sake.
Such a copy is no longer connected to the user who originally shared it. So the new copy is all yours. To do this, right click on the shared file and choose the command Make a copy. That copy will appear on My Drive and not in the Shared with me category.
Convert PDF files
Do you have a lot of PDF files on your Google Drive? When it comes to bulky files, you can gain space by converting them to the Google Docs format. After all, you know that these are not included in the calculation of your storage space taken up. You can perform that conversion by right-clicking on the file and then executing the command Open with choose, followed by Google Docs. The result is a Google document that has exactly the same name as the PDF file.
You can then delete the PDF file. Don’t forget to empty the trash. You can also capture in Google Drive settings to convert all uploaded files to Google Docs format by default.
Symbolic links
Finally, suppose you want to keep different copies of the same file in different folders on Google Drive. For example, you have shared different folders with other people and certain documents are for all teams. You want that when someone modifies something on one copy of this file, these changes are immediately made on all copies. This works with a symbolic link. You actually make an alias of this file.
Select the file you want to make a symbolic link from and use the key combination Shift + Z. This will open a mini-menu in which you indicate in which folder the symbolic link should be placed. The Shift + Z shortcut works on Windows and macOS. You can apply the keyboard shortcut to both files and folders. When you delete the main file, the symbolic links will also disappear.
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