Google Docs Special #1: Sharing documents in Google Docs

Creating a document purely for your own enjoyment isn’t a common practice – usually it’s a way to communicate information with someone else. In the previous section we looked at how to import and export files, but Google Docs enables you to begin sharing your data long before you’ve even finished it.
Although it’s more usual that you would finish a document before wanting someone else to see it, in many cases it can be easier to collaborate with colleagues on a document. If you’ve ever done this before, you may be familiar with the ping-pong of emails containing file attachments. What starts out being seemingly simple often results in a creakingly full inbox, inconsistencies between versions and a headache working out where bits have been changed and where it all went wrong.

Easy collaboration
With collaboration on Google Docs, you’ll only ever be working with one single document, and because everyone involved is working on it in real time and in the same place, a lot of the common issues mentioned simply disappear. There’s no problem with making sure everyone is working on the same file, for instance, because there’s only one file. In the unlikely event that something disastrous goes wrong, you can also take comfort in the fact that Google Docs keeps a complete revision history, so you can see who saved what and when, and if necessary you can always revert to a previous version of your work-in-progress.

Ways to share
There are several other ways to share your work – see the box on the right for more details. But by far the best way is to have people collaborate on the same document. To actually make changes to the document, they will need to have their own Google account. You can send the invitation to a non-Google address and it can still be used, but the person who receives it will need to sign up for a Google account first.
As well as the option to collaborate, you can just allow people to view the document minus the ability to make changes. This can be useful if you want people to be able to see how you are progressing with something, but you don’t want them to interfere.

Group working with Google Docs
1. Create your document
The first step is obviously to create your document. Click the Share menu and choose “Share with others”. Then type in the email addresses of the people you want to share it with. They’ll need a Gmail account to use this feature.

2. Work with others
If someone else is also actively using the document, their Google name will appear in the bottom right of the screen. When your view of the document is updated, you should also see any changes that they’ve made

3. Make sharing easier
It can be a bit dangerous to edit the document at the same time. However, there are a number of tools you can use to make it easier. The first is Notes (in the Insert menu), which you can add to mark particular bits of text.

4. Roll back changes
You can use the revision history (the location depends on which tool you are using) to sort out any mistakes and revert to a previous version. The history tracks all save points and editors. You can also email editors via the Share menu.

Great ideas for sharing using Google Docs
Download - The most obvious way of getting your documents into the hands of someone else is to download it and then give the file to someone, either by putting it on a USB stick, burning it to CD or whatever. Depending on the document type, you can choose from a range of different formats. Select one that’s most likely to be useable by the recipient. You could even email it, but there’s a better way to do this, as we’ll see next...

Email - In any Google Docs application it’s possible to click the Share button and choose “Email as attachment”. A window will now appear for you to enter email addresses and choose a file format. Google Docs will then send it to the specified email addresses.

Invite - You can invite people to view or collaborate on your documents. Just choose Share > Share with others and type in their email addresses. Note that recipients will need to sign up for a Google account if they want to make amendments to the files.

Publish online - Choose Share > Publish as web page to automatically create a Google-hosted web page. You will get the URL for this page which you can then visit yourself and of course email out to others.