Best Practices for Managing your Files and Folders in Google Drive

1. Best Practices for Managing your Files and Folders in Google Drive
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2. What’s Google really good at?”
That’s a question I ask all the time when working with people on features in Google Drive. “Search” is, of course, the
most common answer. So, when managing lots of files in your Google Drive, don’t forget about the search bar at the
very top - that’s how I find my files quickly and with little effort. Read on to find more strategies for file and folder
management in Drive:
1. Building an Effective File System
2. Searching Your FIles Effectively
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3. Building an Effective File System
● When you convert to Google Drive, don’t assume that old
strategies and habits are the way to go.
● Google uses search in the background to power your file
system which means that everything is indexed, even stuff
you might not think of.
● In Google Drive, you can search for:
o Document titles
o Content
o Type of file
o Who owns the file, etc.
● Start off by creating fewer folders than you think and stick
to the one sub-folder rule.
● You’ll never find files when you create too many sub-
folders. With Google Drive, less is more.
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Fig 1. - Notice I only have one sub-folder in the
structure for Branditarians (a client of mine). No
more. If I did, it would only confuse me, and I’d
waste time trying to find the file I needed. Here, all I
have to know is the name of the project (and most
projects only contain about 20 or so files), and I can
browse those files in a second.

4. Searching your Files Effectively
● Keep in mind that you are part of the indexing that Google does for you, so if your files are named “test doc 1”
and “random paper”, then you’ll never find them, regardless of how well you think you’ve searched - they’re
buried among all your other poorly named documents!
● In order to search files effectively, you must adopt a clear and precise naming convention for your needs.
● For example, a teacher may use this naming convention: Period (class period) Last Name (of the student)
Name of assignment.
5 Johansson My Favorite Animal
● To find the documents later, the teacher simply has to do is search for either the period number, or the last
name, or the name of the assignment, and all three will yield a good result
● To search for a file: type your query in the search bar at the top of the Drive interface. (Note: Don’t go all the
way to the top in the Chrome Browser - that will send you to a Google search on the internet and away from
your files)
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5. ● Once you’ve entered your query, like ‘ipad’, you’ll notice that Google auto suggests some hits for you already.
Fig 2. - Searching in Google Drive is one of the quicker ways of accessing files, especially if you know a few
things about the file, and most of the time you probably do.
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6. ● To search for a specific type of file: click the dropdown arrow to the right of the ‘x’ in the search bar for the
ability to limit your search to a specific kind of document.
Fig 3. - Your search brings up a few documents, especially after you’ve been using Google Drive for a bit. Keep in
mind these hints - a bolded title of a document means you haven’t seen the latest edits. You can also get a glimpse
of who owns the document (maybe someone shared it with you?) and when it was last modified. If you know the
document was modified last week, for example, it should be pretty simple to find what you’re looking for.
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7. ● The next time you start a new document, think about naming it properly so you can search for it later.
● You can always rename a file halfway through working on it to make it more precise.
● Create your files and file system to work for you and not the other way around.
● Do not create unnecessary sub-folders.
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