Google Docs Training Tutorials – Using Folders
Google Docs Tutorial - Part 7. As your list of documents gets longer and longer, you may want to start organizing them by putting them into folders.
In the screen below, you can see the All folders section, and under this icon a list of folders will appear once you have created some folders. Currently, there are no folders, so Google Docs has created a folder called Items not in folders. The contents of this folder will show you the items that have not been placed in a specific folder. Notice below that the contents of All items and Items not in folders are exactly the same, as items have not been placed in other folders (since folders have not been created).
To create a folder for the Banana Project, go to the New menu and click Folder. As seen below, the new folder appears under the All Folders option, and then you can enter a name for the new folder in the box highlighted with “New Folder.” In this example, you would enter “Banana Project.” You can also add a description for the folder in the space provided and put a label on this folder. To label the folder, click on the box shown below and change the color of the folder. In the example, you would click on light yellow, then click the Save button to complete the folder creation process.
As you can see, the title of the new folder and the listing in the All Folders option now has a light yellow background.
Currently there are no items listed in the new folder, so you will need to add some items. To do this, go to the All items list and select the items that are for the Banana Project. Select them by clicking the check boxes. When you have them all checked, click on Move to on the menu bar (see below). This opens a Move dialog box.
In the Move dialog box, click the triangle next to My folders (if needed) to display the “Banana Project” folder. Click on that folder and then select the Move to folder button. All of the documents that you have selected will then be moved to the “Banana Project” folder.
Notice at the top of the screen, the 8 documents have been added to the “Banana Project” folder and you can also Undo at this point if so desired.
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If you deselect the documents by going down to the bottom of the page and clicking Select, None. As shown below, you can see that these documents have “Banana Project” listed in the folder column because they are now a part of the “Banana Project” folder.
Then you can click on the Banana Project folder to see the documents listed there. You have successfully created a folder for the banana project documents.
If you want to move an item out of a folder, you can select it, and then click Move to in the menu bar. In a new window, there is a Remove from current folder option that should be highlighted. Then click on the Remove from folder button.
Your document is then removed from the Banana Project folder and put back into the Items not in folders list. Notice to the right, the changed location of the “Banana Tree Paper” document.
That was a good exercise, but because this document is part of the Banana Project, it should be moved back to the created folder. With the file still selected, click Move to in the menu bar, click Banana Project, and click Move to folder as done previously. You can have as many folders as you like.
Folders can be deleted just like documents. If you want to remove the “Banana Project” folder, click the checkbox next to its name as shown in screen to the left. Make sure that you do not have any of your documents checked, because they will be deleted as well. Click Delete on the menu bar and then your project folder will be sent to the Trash. If you want to undo this action, at the top of the window you can click Undo.
When you look in the Trash, you can see that the Banana Project folder is there (see below).
If you click on the triangle to the left of the folder, you can see that none of the documents were moved to the trash, only the folder itself.
If you click on Items not in folders, you can see that the banana documents have moved back to that section. If you wanted to delete all of the items in the folder, you would check them like you did with the folder itself, and click Delete on the menu bar.
Since you would probably like to keep the folder for organizational purposes, you should put the items back in a folder. With the folder still in the trash, click on Trash, select the checkbox next to the name, and click on Undelete as shown below.
The Banana Project folder is moved back to the All folders section, as shown below, and amazingly, the items that were originally in the folder have been added back to the folder. You did not have to move them manually again.
These exercises have demonstrated that you can use Google Docs folders to keep your items organized and easier to find.
