My Most Asked Question about Google Drive

As of last year my school had local network storage for all of the teachers and students.  It was nice in the sense that we could access our h drive (as it is called) from anywhere on campus.  When we made the switch to GAFE and gained access to Google Drive we were able access our files anywhere.  The problem now became getting all those years of collected files from our h drive to Drive.  It was/is such a common predicament that it has become the most common question I get asked around the school--other than does your beard bother you.

This led me to writing this blog post.  I'm going to attempt to explain how you can transfer all of your files from your computer (whether it be h drive, my documents, or any other location) to your Drive account.

Prepping Your Files to Transfer

So first things first, you need to prep your files for transfer.  If you are like me you have files tucked within folders which are tucked within folders, and they are in turn tucked in more folders.  You also probably don't want to recreate all of that organization.  Thankfully, there is an easy way to accomplish this:

1. Create a new folder in a location you can find (like the desktop) and name it something you will remember.  In most cases you can right click and select "create new folder".  Once everything is said and done you will delete this folder.

2. Copy and paste all the files/folders you want to move to this newly created folder.  The easiest way is to select the first item you want to move (it could be a file or a folder) and then hold down shift and select the last item.

Moving the Files

For the next step you will need Chrome.  When you upload the files you have a couple of options on how the files will look when they get to Drive.  Option one:  you can leave the files as they are; the file format will not change. For example, Word documents will be uploaded as Word documents.   The downside is they are more cumbersome to edit, collaborate, and access offline.  Option two:  you can convert all of your Office documents to Google documents.  The benefit is easier editing, collaboration, and offline access.  You can even download Google Documents as Office documents.  (Do I sound a little biased?)  To enable Drive to convert your files you need to enable it by:

 Selecting the gear icon in the upper right corner>upload settings>Convert uploaded files to Google Docs format.  (See below)

Now that we have that out of the way we can upload the files.

1. Open a Chrome browser tab and access your Drive.
2. Press the upload button to the right of the red "Create" button and select "Folder" from the menu.  (See picture below.)

3. Another menu will come up and from there you will select the folder that you created earlier. Press "Upload" and a new window will open showing the progress of your upload.  I will warn you that you if you have a lot of files to upload it will take time so start the upload in the morning.

Unpacking

Now that you have all your files on Google Drive it is time to unpack.

1. Open your newly uploaded folder and click on the check box next to "TITLE".  This will select all the items in the folder.



2. Next, select the "Move to" icon (it is a gray folder) and select "My Drive" from the menu that appears.  Click done and you are unpacked.



3.  Now you can go back to the original folder you uploaded and delete it.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the easiest way to upload all your files from your computer to Drive while still keeping everything organized.

I hope you enjoyed, or at least learned something.

Cody