Sharing Your Work

1. Sharing Files

Once you have created a document, a spreadsheet or a presentation, you may wish to share it with others.   You may want these other people to view your work or you may want them to edit your work or work collaboratively with you to add more content.

Here are some ways to share:

1. Send the work as attachments in an email or a text message (SMS).
2. Print your documents on to paper and mail them or hand them out.
3. Save your files to a USB flash drive and share the flash drive.
4. Use your organization's network sharing service.
5. Use the cloud and upload your documents to a social media site or to a file sharing service.

1. Email works well for small documents that you want to quickly deliver to another person.  Most email service providers restrict the size of the files you can send via email. 
   
   
2. Print is reliable and portable but slow to travel over long distances.  Paper is also expensive and environmentally wasteful.
   
   
3. The USB flash drive is a portable tool but easily lost due to its small size.  It can only be shared with one person at a time.
   
   
4. If you work for a large organization, they may have an internal sharing service.  Sharepoint® is the Microsoft version of this service.  These  services are secure and effective.  Sharepoint® is good for working together on documents but is restricted to users within the organization and sometimes, their guests.
   
   
5. There are some highly technical descriptions of cloud computing but in essence, it spreads out massive amounts of data on to a series of servers.  For an individual user, cloud services (file sharing services) have developed that will host your data for you at no cost.  This frees up the storage area of your computer.  You can access these files from any device connected to the Internet, including your smart phone.  Some of these services also allow you to give access to your documents for other people to view and edit.

1.1. Popular File Sharing Sites

Free services are always subject to change.  At the writing of this course, this most ubiquitous of the sharing services is Google Drive.  Other popular free services are Dropbox, iCloud and SkyDrive. 

SkyDrive is a Microsoft service that is about to be renamed to OneDrive as the result of a lawsuit.  It is the default cloud service on any new computer pre-installed with Windows.  You do not have to use it but it will always appear as an option.

Unless you wish make your documents fully public, an account will be required from anyone who wishes to access your files.  This account is often an email account as well and will provide access to other features.

For this course, we will work with examples from Google Drive.  You need Internet access and a Google account to access Google Drive.

1.2. Google Drive

You can find Google Drive by typing the words Google Drive into your browser search bar.  Or you can type in the actual URL for the service:  https://drive.google.com

You can sign in with your gmail account if you have one, or you can create a free gmail account.  Google Drive currently allows email addresses other than gmail to access Google Drive but it is difficult to locate this option and it is subject to change.

Once your account is set up and you have logged in with your email address and password, you will see a screen called My Drive.  This will contain a list of the documents you have put on to Google Drive.  If this is new for you, your list will be blank for now.

1.3. My Drive View

1.4. Upload a Document

To add a file to your Google Drive, click on the upload arrow in the top left column.

You will then be taken to your own computer files to find and select the document you wish to upload.  This is a similar process to how you uploaded pictures from your computer into PowerPoint®. 

Once you select your document and click on Open in the bottom of the window, the document will automatically upload into Google Drive. 

In the example, a document titled "Exercise idea" has been uploaded and inserted alphabetically into the list of existing files.

1.5. Upload Document view

1.6. Sharing the Document

Click in the checkbox next to the document you wish to share.  Then select the Share button near the top of the screen.

A large box with Share options will open next.  You will need to do several things:

1.  If you want only the people you email to be able to view your document, then enter only the email addresses of the people you wish to invite.  You do not need to change your access from Private.

2.  If you want the people you email to be able to edit your document, leave the Can Edit option that appears just to the right of the emails.  If you don't want them to edit, you will need to change this option.

3.  Add any message you may wish to go in the email that will contain the link to your document.

4.  Click the Share and save button to send

Your Sharing settings box will now show the names and emails of the people with whom you have shared the document.

5.  Click Done

1.7. Sharing Settings View