Google Docs for Seniors

A Practical Guide to Cloud-Based Word Processing

Scott La Counte

• Publisher: SL Editions
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781621077077
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Computer Science General
• Index: Computer Science

Part 1: Google Drive

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1]

The Google Drive Crash Course

This chapter will cover: Why is it free? Creating files Finding files

Google Drive

Before talking about the star of this book (Google Docs), it’s worth spending a little bit of time with Google Drive.

Google Drive is the where all your beautiful Docs will be stored.

Google Drive Overview

Every computer has “local” storage, which is where all the stuff (files, photos, documents), is stored directly on the computer. Windows computers have File/System Explorer, Mac Computers have Finder, and Google has Google Drive—it’s the same concept you are accustomed to on your home computer, but it’s all online.

Google Drive is basically an online version of a file directory; whatever you create in Google is stored here—think of it like Google’s version of DropBox. In fact, you can also store files here—photos, videos, PDFs—whatever you want.

To get started, go to drive.google.com. If you are not signed in to a Google account, then you’ll be greeted by a lovely screen that looks a little like the one below:



Click that “Go to Google Drive” blue button and you’ll see an option that looks like the below:



While Google Docs is free to use, you do need a Google account to use it. So that’s the catch, right? Free to use, but you have to pay to get a Google account? Nope! A Google account is also free. If you use Gmail, then you already have one, and can use that to sign in.
Once you are all signed in you’ll see the main interface. The side pane is your main navigation. This is where you will see all of your folders. It’s probably empty right now, unless you’ve started using it.



Two things to note here:

1. Shared with me—if people share documents or folders with you, they’ll be here unless you move them.

2. Starred—to help you stay organized, you can “star” documents. When you “star” them, they will still be in your main directory, but they’ll be here as well.

If you have the basic free plan, you’ll have 15 GBs of storage. That’s obviously a lot. Considering that a document is very small, you’ll probably never want more—unless you are also using Google Drive to store videos and files, ...

Table of contents

• Introduction
• Part 1: Google Drive
• The Google Drive Crash Course
• Part 2: Google Docs
• Google Docs Crash Course
• Your First Document
• Sharing Is Caring
• Beyond the Basics
• This and That
• Google Docs Keyboard Shortcuts
• About the Author