Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Problem Solving when Trying to Share Google Docs, Sheets, Slides or Sites”.
Have you ever shared a Google Drive document, spreadsheet or slideshow with other people and then had those people tell you that they are not able to access those files? Yes, of course you have that happens to everybody. In this article, I will show you how to problem solve that issue, so that you can make sure that the people that you want to see these documents are able to do so and as a bonus at the end, I’ll show you how to problem solve access To your Google sites so watch the video Until the End to see that important tip, let’s get started so here I am in my Google Drive and I have pre-selected three different examples to show you and I’ll bring those up in just a minute. But for now I just want you to see my home screen in Google Drive. It’S got a list of many of my documents. There are several different ways that I can share documents that are in my Google Drive.
So let’s say, for example, this National Spanish exam spreadsheet is one that I’ve tried to share and the recipient hasn’t been able to access it. I might click on it here to select it and then I can go up here and click this button. This is the share button it used to be over here and in some of your versions of Google drive. It may still be, but I’m just going to click here to bring up the share settings for this particular spreadsheet. So that’s one way to get there and we’ll look at these options in just a minute another way to get to the share settings instead of clicking on the file that you want to share and then clicking this button here, you can simply go to the file That you want to share and over here on the right. There are three dots and you can just click on those dots and choose, share and share again, and you get to that same share window. I’M going to click done, because I want you to see the third option for how to get to the share settings for a particular file, and that would be double clicking on the file to open it up, so that you can then do something with it. Either.
Work on it or in this case share so here from within this Google sheet. I can simply Click Share and it brings up those same share options in the share window. Okay, so we’ve looked at three different ways to get to the share settings for any kind of file that you have in Google Drive.
Now, let’s move on to the topic of this video, which is how to problem solve the sharing access that you’ve set up for a particular file. So I’m going to click here on share to bring up the share window, and you can see that it lists me here as a person with access and there’s no one else that specifically has been granted access to this file. If I want to add other specific people so that they can access this file, I could just put in their email addresses one by one here into this box.
I can select a specific person or even a Google contacts group that I’ve set up in Google contacts. If you want to learn more about Google Contacts and setting up groups, please watch my other videos on that topic, but for now let’s say I just want this person to be given access to this file. I’Ve got her email address here now and now I need to decide what kind of access I want to Grant to her. Do I want her to be an editor or simply a viewer of this file.
Another option is commenter. She could look at the file and make comments, but not truly edit. The document, if I want to I can include a message here and I could click Send. Okay, the access to that file has been updated. I’M going to go back and Click Share again. Now you can see that there are two people listed as having specific access to this file, but let’s look below the list of people with access.
In addition to specific people that have been added to this document and given access, we have General access, as it is set up right now. Anyone with the link to this spreadsheet, if they click that link. If they go to the link, they will be able to access this document. In many many cases when you try to share a spreadsheet, a document, a slideshow whatever it is, with someone else and they’re not able to access it.
It’S because you’ve set up the general access incorrectly or maybe you’ve shared it to their old email address, or something like that. So whenever I want to be absolutely sure that the person I send a document or spreadsheet to is going to be able to access it whenever that’s the case, I go here to the general access and I change it from restricted to anyone with the link with That set as it is here, anyone that has the link to this spreadsheet will be able to access it and they will be able to view the contents of the spreadsheet. Now. What if you want them to be able to help you edit it? Well, if you’re, okay, with anyone with the link being able to do that, then that’s fine, just switch it to editor and anyone that has the link can help you work on the spreadsheet, like I showed before, there’s also commenter as an option there I’m going to Switch this back to viewer, so let’s say my first attempt to share this with suie failed.
I would just check all these settings and then I would click this button to copy the link to this specific spreadsheet. I click done and then I just need to send that link to Susie or whomever I could paste that link into an email to the person. I could post it in a learning management system or on a website, but whoever has access to that link will be able to see this document. Okay, the process is pretty much identical for Google Documents, so here I am in a Google doc.
If I click on share and remember remember, this is only one of three ways. I’Ve shown you of how to get to these share settings, but it’s the same exact process and principle. I could click to add specific people or I could adjust the general access so that anyone with the link can access this document or even maybe edit it or I could leave it as restricted. I’M going to cancel that and click done next, let’s jump over here to a Google slideshow. Once again, it’s pretty much the same exact process.
I click share. In this case, you can see that my slideshow was not already set to be accessible by anyone with the link it was set to be restricted, and so, if somebody’s telling me, I just can’t see your slideshow well. This is probably why I need to switch it from restricted to anyone with the link it updates.
I might consider giving them editor access, but I don’t think I will in this case I click copy, link and done share that link with whoever needs it and when they click it, they’ll be able to get to my Google slideshow okay, it’s time now for a Bonus tip, and that is how to troubleshoot access to Google sites. So here’s a Google website that I’ve created – and this seems to be quite different – the process of sharing this looks quite different than it did for my Google Docs sheets and slides. So how could I share this? Let’S say I’m completely done creating this wonderful website. I of course would need to go here and click publish. I can see the currently published website and then the draft. If I’m satisfied with the changes in the draft, I can click publish and now this website is published for people to see it, but does that mean that they actually can see it? Well, that depends on the share settings for your Google site from within the Google site interface.
Here you can just click on this button to share with others and that will bring up some settings. So here are my share settings, but you can see these are a little different than the settings for the other files that we’ve looked at. I still have the ability to add specific people, groups, Etc. That will be able to look at this website, but if you think about it, usually websites work a little bit differently than files. We want people to go to our websites. In most cases, you want it to be public in almost all cases.
So what do we need to do? Well, if you look at this, because this Google sites account that I’m using just for this portion of the video is from a company an organization by default, the draft of this website that I’m working on is limited and accessible. Only to people that are part of the same company or organization – and that says it here – I’ve blurred this out, but imagine the name of a company here. It says anyone in this group with the link can edit and that’s just the draft.
So I think that’s fine, I’m going to leave it that way, so that the draft draft itself cannot be seen except by people that are in my same company. But what about the published website right now? It’S also set so that only people from my company can access it. Well, that’s not good. I want this to be public for anyone to see so I’m going to go here where it says, publish site and the name of the company and I’ll click on the arrow and I’m going to switch it from limited to my company to completely public. So the draft will remain private just to my company, but the published site will become public. At this point, I might as well click this button to copy the the publish site link once I’ve done, that I click done, and now, if I want to, I can go to a new tab or open a new browser. Whatever I want to do, I paste in the address for the web page tap enter, and it takes me to the truly published website that anyone can see if they go to that address.
So this is a problem that comes up all the time with Google sites, especially in education or in businesses in which people have created a wonderful website, but forgotten that only people in their own organization are going to be able to see it unless they switch it. To be publish site, public and click done, one last comment about sharing a Google site. Not only must the Google site be published and made public, but also every embedded item within that Google site so, for example, this favorite comic strip is an embedded item. If it’s not set to be shared, then the general public will not be able to see it same with this calendar. There shouldn’t be any problem with this YouTube video, but just be aware that any documents slideshows spreadsheets anything like that that you share on a published public website. Those still will not be visible unless individually they’ve been set to be visible to everyone with the link.
Okay, so I hope that this video has been helpful to help you problem solve and troubleshoot sharing issues that might come up when you’re trying to share a Google doc, a Google sheet, a Google slide or as a bonus, a Google site thanks for watching. I hope you found this tutorial to be helpful. If you did please like follow And subscribe, and when you do click the bell and you’ll be notified. When I post another video, if you’d like to support my channel the best way to do that is to become a channel member, you could also click the thanks button or support me through my patreon on account or by buying Channel merch and you’ll, see information about Those options in the description below the video speaking of supporting my channel, I need to say thank you to my fantastic super techie and ultr techie supporters. Thank you. So much for all you do to support the channel. I really appreciate it. .