Google Drive – Jake Miller

New Keyboard Shortcuts in Google Drive

📺 Check this out in video form on TikTok, Instagram Reels, or YouTube Shorts. 📺

Google Adds New Shortcuts – Just for Google Drive!

FINALLY, Google Drive has added keyboard shortcuts for INSIDE Drive!! I can’t believe it took them so long, but we now have the ability to move a file from one place to another with a shortcut. In the old days, we used to have to:Now we can Control + C or Control + X, and then Control + V in the place we want the file. What a really efficient and easy way for us to get files from one place in Google Drive to another.

My mind has always been blown that Google Drive didn’t have this. I mean, they’ve been around for over 11 years, and the fact that they didn’t have those keyboard shortcuts for moving files around was kind of crazy.

Gif showing new keyboard shortcut in Google Drive.

The update has also made it possible to add the link into a doc directly from Drive. When we first began using Drive, there were quite a few necessary steps to accomplish this move.

Now it’s possible to add a link to a file into a Google Doc or Slides by simply clicking on a Drive file and pressing Control + C, then pressing Control + V in the spot where you want the link!

One More NEW Shortcut!

Gif showing new keyboard shortcut in Google Drive.

Control + Shift + V will create a shortcut to a file that you’d like to have in multiple places. For example, maybe you’d like to use the same file in both your math and science classes for a joint project. Use Control + C to copy the file from the math folder, jump over to the science folder, and Control + Shift + V, and you’ve got the same file in both places. Times savers are awesome, especially when they allow us to be more productive.

📺 Check this out in video form on TikTok, Instagram Reels, or YouTube Shorts. 📺

[ Image(s) Source:https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2022/05/keyboard-shortcut-improvements-google-drive.html ] Continue reading New Keyboard Shortcuts in Google Drive

Graphic Design Tools in Google Slides: Align, Distribute & Center

On the Google Teacher Tribe podcast (one of my favorite podcasts) Kasey Bell & Matt Miller often refer to Google Slides as the “Swiss Army Knife of gSuite.” And I agree! There are so many things that you can do in Google Slides. In this post, I’m going to show you 3 super useful Graphic Design tools that are available in Slides.

Align – When you select 2+ objects (images, shapes, text boxes, etc.) you can align them horizontally (left, right or center) or vertically (top, bottom or center) with each other!

Distribute – When you select 3+ objects (images, shapes, text boxes, etc.) you can distribute them horizontally or vertically in relation to each other. This spaces the objects out evenly. It’s important to note that it’s based off of the positions of the leftmost and rightmost objects. So, get your left and right objects into place and then use this tool to distribute everything else out evenly in between.

Center on Page – This tool does exactly what you’d expect it to, but with one nice bonus – if you have multiple objects selected it will center them as a group. So, the objects themselves may not be in the center of the slide, but they will be arranged with the center of the group at the center of the slide.

A note for the Google Drawings fans out there: each of these items are also available there and work in the same manner.

Check out the EduGIF of these 3 tools in action below and, if it moves too fast, check out the Pausable EduGIF here.

Add your Google Drawings into your Google Docs!

On 1/7/19, Google announced that you could now embed previously created Google Drawings into Google Docs. Before this announcement, you could create new Drawings from within a Doc, but you could not pull in Drawings created in the regular Drawings platform.

This was limiting, because the Drawings tool within Docs was only provided a small workspace and had less tools. It was also frustrating that a Drawing couldn’t be in both places – a Drawing and Doc – without copying and pasting or using the following workaround.

Up to this point, the best workaround was to download the Drawing as an image and then insert that image into the Doc. This was frustrating for a few reasons: it involved inconvenient extra steps and it meant that the Drawing in the Doc would not update if the actual Drawing was updated.

Well, now Google has made good on fixing this. In the Google Docs Insert menu, go to Drawing and now you can select New to create a new one or From Drive to select one that you created in the Google Drawings platform. When the drawing is changed in Drawings, you’ll see an Update option in the Doc to show the changes (unless you selected Unlink when you added the Drawing). Check it out in the animated GIF below:

Embed Drawings into Docs GIF

Keyboard Shortcuts for Bullets & Numbering

Sometimes, I think a trick, hack or shortcut that I do with technology is unimpressive and something that everyone either knows or doesn’t care about. But then, when I mention it to someone, and they’re like “Whoa!” I think “Welp, this should be an EduGIF.”

Recently, I had the good fortune to be recording a guest appearance on the Shukes & Giff Podcast (er, maybe it’s the Shukes & Jake Podcast, now!? Kidding!). When I was chatting about Emoji Bullets with Kim Pollishuke (a.k.a. “Shukes”), I mentioned, “So, I’ll just click Shift+Command+8 and then…” and she said “Wait, What!?” And then I knew it, EduGIF time. So here it is . . .

in most Google Tools:

Click CTRL (Command on Mac) + Shift + 7 for Numbering
Click it again to undo numbering
Click CTRL (Command on Mac) + Shift + 8 for Bullets
Click it again to undo bullets

Here’s the EduGIF!

Shortcuts for Bullets and Numbering GIF

Font Formatting in Google Comments

Did you ever really, really, really want a student (or colleague) to understand your feedback on a portion of a Google Doc? Well, my friend, I have got news for you. Surround a word (or group of words) in a Google Docs (or Slides, Sheets, Drawings…) Comment with asterisks (*) and you’ve got bold text. 💥Boom💥 Surround them with underscores ( _ ) and you’ve got italicized text. 💥Boom💥

🤔❓Why does using the underscore lead to italicized text instead of underlined text!? I have no idea. Ask the Googs.❓🤔

Even more puzzling, there’s no option to create underlined text. But hey, 3 minutes ago, you didn’t know about how to do bold or italics, so calm it down, buddy.

Here’s the real head-scratcher: some people seem to want strikethrough text in a comment. 🤷🏻‍♂️ Why? I dunno. But it’s possible. Just surround your text with hyphens (-) and you’ve got strikethrough. Medium-half-excited-don’t-know-why-anyone-wants-this-feature-💥Boom💥. But again, 4 minutes ago, you were clueless that this was even within the realm of possibility, so turn your snark dial down, Francis. Anyhow, here’s a GIF. Please enjoy.

Using Answer Tables in Google Docs

A few weeks ago, I posted a little hack that I like to use for making student answers in Google Docs easier to find. You can see that post here. Multiple people reminded me of a practice that many elementary educators love using:

Instead of just pre-formatting the answer space, actually create an answer table. This makes it less likely that students accidentally mess up the pre-existing content in the doc and makes their answers easier to find. This is a great practice when assigning these Docs as Make a Copy for Each Student in Google Classroom.

There are 3 different ways to do this. I’ll show each in the GIF below and then go over them in some additional detail below the GIF.

More details on what you see in the GIF below . . . Continue reading Using Answer Tables in Google Docs

Pre-Format Student Answers

Grading stinks. Anything that we can do to make it better–without sacrificing the quality of the pedagogy or feedback–is worth doing! Here’s a little trick to make it easier to locate student answers in Google Docs (or other files) that you assign in Google Classroom . . .

Saving Images from Google Docs

When edtech rockstar Matt Miller says “Hey Jake, you should make this into an #EduGIF!” you listen. He was right, too. It was an awesome tip.

It was a pickle that I had been in before, but I had never known the solution. You’re preparing something–a lesson, a blog post, whatever–and you need a picture. Not just any picture, but a picture that you’ve used before. It’s in that one Google Doc, but you can’t get to the picture from anywhere else. So, you right-click on it in that Google Doc . . . but there’s no Save Image option.

There are a handful of ways that you can get that image saved as a file on your computer, but the one that Matt sent to me is pretty awesome. It’s just a few steps and super easy. And it’s even more convenient if you have multiple images that you need from the same Google Doc. So, let’s get to it – first an animated #EduGIF and then the steps for those of you who like to read words.

Open the Google Doc
Select File > Download As > Web Page (.html, zipped)
Locate the saved file on your computer
Unzip the file (on my Mac, all that I have to do is double-click)
A new folder should have been created. Inside of that folder will be all of the images that are in that Google Doc. Feel free to move your image out of there and delete the other files as well as the zipped file.

Add a Popup Message to your Google Docs

Ever wish that you could tell people something when they open up your Google Docs? Maybe “Make a copy of this document, answer the questions and share it with your teacher!” or “This is a draft!”

Well, it’s possible. Some simple coding in the script editor and you can make it happen. I know that some of you are thinking “Simple . . . . coding. . . !?” while making this face, but it’s true. Just follow the steps below and you’ll make it happen.

Before we jump into the how, or what it looks like, a few notes:

Only Editors will be able to see the popup. In my testing, someone who is “can view” or “can comment” does not see the popup. Also, they have to be explicitly shared as editors, not just “anyone with the link can edit.”
If you copy the document within your own account, the popup will appear on the copy as well.
If someone shared on the document makes a copy, the popup will NOT appear on their copy.
If you send the document out on Google Classroom as “Make a Copy for Each Student” it will NOT include the popup in those copies. I was bummed when I discovered this, because it would have been huge for teachers.

Now that you know those notes and limitations, let’s dive into it. First, an animated GIF of how to do it and then, below the GIF, the step by step with code that you can just copy and paste.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

From within your Google Doc, click on Tools > Script Editor.
Click on Untitled Project and rename the project.
Replace the words myFunction with onOpen. (This is what tells it to run automatically)
After the { type DocumentApp. (include the period)
From the menu that pops up select getUi : Ui
After {DocumentApp.getUi() type a period.
From the menu that pops up select alert(String prompt) : Button
In place of the word prompt type your popup message.
Add quotation marks around your message (and inside of the parentheses).
Click the save icon.
Go back to your Doc, refresh and check it out!

Another note: You can actually edit the appearance of the popup with some HTML and CSS coding, but that would take me longer to explain that 1 GIF can handle!

Credits: I learned this from one of Google’s Applied Digital Skills Courses in the “Code Welcome Screen” Activity. You can learn about adding some formatting to your popup in that course.

4 Ways to Upload to Google Drive

There are 4 main ways to upload files to Google Drive. If you include syncing your computer to Drive, downloading Drive or the other ways to access the “New” menu (right-click, clicking on “My Drive” at the top) there are even more. But the 4 main ones are below, first as a list and then shown in a GIF:

Click New > File Upload
Click New > Folder Upload
Click New > File Upload and use shift+click or ctrl+click to select multiple files
Drag & Drop into the Google Drive window