How to collaborate in Google Drive (and Docs, Sheets, and Slides)

You may think of Google Drive mostly as a cloud storage service, but it’s also the foundation for the company’s online productivity apps including Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides, where you can collaborate with colleagues on documents, spreadsheets, and presentations in real time or asynchronously. Everything you create in these apps — collectively known as the Google Docs Editors — is stored in Google Drive.

With a basic Google account, you get free use of these apps and 15GB of free Google Drive storage. For more storage, Google One plans start at $2 per month. For business use, Google sells several tiers of Google Workspace plans that include more Drive storage as well as enterprise collaboration, security, and administrative tools. These plans start at $7 per user per month. There’s also a free Google Workspace Essentials plan for organizations that don’t need hosted email.

Google Drive and the Docs Editors work more or less the same in the free and paid plans, but with a few extra features added to the Workspace versions. Note that if you have a work or school account, your administrator may have disabled or limited some capabilities.

Most of this article covers sharing and collaborating via My Drive, the drive controlled by individual users whether they use Google Drive through a personal Google account or a Workspace account. A section at the end covers shared drives, which are available only through Google Workspace accounts.

Note: Gemini, Google’s AI assistant, is now integrated with Google’s productivity suite for some users, but it’s something you interact with individually, not a tool for collaborating with co-workers, and thus beyond the scope of this article. For info on what you can do with Gemini in Google Drive and the other apps, see our tutorial “Google Workspace: 7 great ways to use the Gemini sidebar.”

In this article:

How to share your document

How to collaborate on a document

How to use shared drives

How to share your document

There are three different ways to start sharing a file in Google Drive and the Docs Editors:

On the home screen of Google Drive (also known as My Drive), select the document, presentation, or spreadsheet that you want to share, then click the Share icon (a head silhouette with a +) on the toolbar that appears above your list of documents. (For simplicity’s sake, we’ll say “document” from now on to refer to spreadsheets and presentations as well.)

Select a document and click the Share button.
Howard Wen / Foundry

On your My Drive page, right-click the document that you want to share and select Share > Share from the menu that appears.

Open a document in Docs, Sheets, or Slides and click the big Share button in the upper-right corner.

Note: Most of the methods described here for sharing a document also apply to if you want to share a folder.

Any of the actions above opens the Share pane, which gives you fine-tuned control over who can see your document and what they can do with it.

Sharing a document in Google Drive.
Howard Wen / Foundry

Sharing privately: Only certain people can access your document

In most cases, business users will want to share files privately — that is, restrict access to specific people or groups. Inside the “Add people, groups, spaces, and calendar events” box on the Share pane, type in the names or email addresses of the people you want to collaborate with on the document. As you start to type, Google will suggest matches from your contacts; click a name or group to add it. You can also type in a brief message to the recipients.

By default, every person you add is given Editor access to your document. You can change this by clicking Editor and selecting Viewer or Commenter instead. Here’s how the three permissions break down:

A Viewer can scroll through and read your document but can’t change it or share it with others.

A Commenter can view the document and add comments and suggestions to it but can’t change the document itself or share it.

An Editor can view, comment on, and edit the document (change text, add images, and so on) and share it with others.

Changing access permissions for invitees.
Howard Wen / Foundry

Important: Keep in mind that this setting applies to all people you’re currently inviting to the document. If you want to give different people different levels of permission, you’ll need to invite them individually or in separate batches, with different access rights assigned each time.

You can also fine-tune these access settings. Click the gear icon in the upper right of the Share pane to adjust these items:

Uncheck the Allow editors to change permissions and share box to prevent those with Editor privileges from sharing the document or changing others’ Viewer, Commentor, or Editor status.

Uncheck the Editors and/or Commenters and viewers boxes if you don’t want those with these access levels to be able to download, print, or make a copy of your document.

Under a paid Google Workspace plan, you can also set an expiration date on which the document will no longer be accessible to your invitees. Back on the main Share pane, click Editor (or whatever access level you’ve assigned) and select Add expiration from the menu that opens. Then, next to “Access expires,” click the pencil icon and select an expiration date (and time if you want) on the pop-up calendar. It can be within one year of the current date. Click Done.

Setting an expiration date for a shared document.Howard Wen / Foundry

When you’ve invited people and set permission levels, click Send. Everyone you’ve included will receive an email with a link they can click to access the document.

Note: A Commenter or Editor must be signed into their Google or Google Workspace account to work in a privately shared document. If they don’t have one, they can sign up for a free Google account.

Managing permissions

You can change a person’s access to the document at any time. Call up the Share pane for the document and you’ll see a list of people who have access to it. Click the button to the right of their name with their access level (Viewer, Commenter, or Editor) and select a different level from the menu that appears.

Changing a collaborator’s permissions for a shared document.
Howard Wen / Foundry

There are a few other options on this menu as well:

Add expiration: Add an expiration date for this person’s access to the document. (This won’t affect other collaborators’ access.)

Transfer ownership: Pass on ownership of the document to this person, making them the administrator instead of you.

Remove access: Revoke their access to the document immediately.

When you’ve made a selection, click Done.

Sharing publicly: Anyone can access your document

In some cases, you might want to share a document publicly, letting anyone view, edit, or comment on it. In the Share pane, below “General access,” click Restricted and on the drop-down menu, select Anyone with the link. Then click the Copy link button below. A link to your document will be generated that you can copy and paste.

By default, the permission for public links is set to Viewer. To allow anyone with the link to comment on or edit your document, click Viewer on the right and select Commenter or Editor.

Sharing a document publicly.
Howard Wen / Foundry

Keep in mind that anyone with the public link to your document can access it whether they get the link from you directly, someone else sends it to them, or they find it through some other means. That’s why it’s important to use public links with great caution, especially when assigning Commenter or Editor access to a link.

Unlike with privately shared documents, people collaborating on publicly shared documents don’t need to have a Google account. If they’re not signed in to a Google account when they access the document, they will appear as an anonymous contributor.

You can turn off the public link to your document at any time by reopening the Share pane and clicking Anyone with the link and setting it back to Restricted.

Sharing from the mobile apps

On the home screen of the Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, or Slides mobile app, tap the three dots to the right of the document’s file name. On the pane that scrolls up, tap Share. This opens the Share screen.

Or, to open the Share screen when you have a document open in the Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides mobile app, tap the Share icon (a head silhouette) at the upper-right corner.

To share your document privately: On the Share screen, enter the names or email addresses of people you want to invite to collaborate on your document. As you enter, Google will suggest matches from your contacts; tap a name or group to add it. You can also type in a brief message. If you want to change the recipients’ access rights from Editor, tap the Editor dropdown and select Viewer or Commenter.

Click the Send icon at the bottom of the screen to send the invite. Everyone you’ve included will receive an email with a link they can click to access the document.

To change access permissions: At the bottom of the Share screen, tap anywhere below “Manage access.” This opens a page that lists who has been given access to your document and their type of access. To change their access type, or to remove their access entirely, tap their name and select an option from the menu that appears.

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Howard Wen / Foundry

To publicly share your document: On Android, tap Not shared at the bottom below “Manage access.” On iOS, tap anywhere below “Manage access.”

On the next page, tap Restricted below “General access.” Then on the next page, tap Restricted again. You’re taken to yet another page: Tap to select Anyone with the link.

On the “General access” page: Viewer is selected by default. Tap Viewer and change it to Commenter or Editor if you prefer.

Finally, tap the chain link icon at the upper right. This public link to your document will be saved to your phone’s clipboard, which you can paste into an email or message.

Status of your shared documents

On your Google Drive and on the Docs, Sheets, and Slides home pages, your documents that are being shared with others are marked by an icon of two silhouetted heads to the right of the document name.

Silhouette icons appear next to the names of shared documents.
Howard Wen / Foundry

Note: If you have Drive set to Grid view, this icon won’t appear with the thumbnail or filename of a shared document.

It’s even easier to find documents that others have shared with you. Along the left side of your Drive home page, click Shared with me to see a list of documents that others are sharing with you.

In the mobile apps: The home screens of the Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides mobile apps also use silhouetted heads to indicate documents you’ve shared.

To see a list of the documents that others are sharing with you in the Google Drive mobile app, tap the Shared (silhouetted heads) icon at the bottom of the screen. In the Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides apps, tap the three-line icon in the upper-left corner. On the panel that scrolls in, tap Shared with me.

How to collaborate on a document

Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides offer a few different ways for people to work together: comments, direct edits, and suggested edits, with a few extras thrown in for real-time collaboration.

Adding and reviewing comments

You and anyone you’ve assigned to be a Commenter or Editor can add comments to your shared document. To do this, click to place the cursor in the document where you want to make a comment. Alternatively, you can highlight text or an image. Then click the Add comment button (a speech balloon icon with a + symbol) on the toolbar above the document.

Adding a comment to a document.
Howard Wen / Foundry

A new comment card will open to the right of the document. Type in your comment and click Comment. To direct your comment to a specific collaborator, type @ followed by their name. As you type, suggested names will appear; choose the appropriate person and enter your comment. They’ll receive an email notification with your comment.

Comment cards created by you and your collaborators appear along the right side of your document. Clicking the speech balloon icon at the upper-right corner (to the left of the webcam icon) will open a side panel that lists all the comments that have been added by you and your collaborators. You can scroll through the comments on this panel to read them, and you and your collaborators can reply to each one with a brief message and/or mark them as resolved.

Reviewing all the comments in a document.
Howard Wen / Foundry

Using the Docs, Sheets, and Slides mobile apps to add and review comments

You can add and review comments in the Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides mobile apps.

To add a comment: In Android, tap in the document where you want to attach a comment (or tap to select an item in the document). Then tap the speech balloon icon at the upper-right corner.

On the Comments panel that opens at the bottom of the page, tap the speech balloon icon with a + inside it. Enter your comment. When you’re finished, tap the right-arrow icon to insert your comment into the document.

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Howard Wen / Foundry

In the iOS apps, theoretically you can tap the text or image you want to comment on, then select Add comment from the toolbar that appears. But this toolbar only appeared some of the time in our tests. If you don’t see it, double-tap in the document where you want the comment to appear, then tap the + icon at the upper right and select Comment.

Either way, a comment box appears below the page. Type in your comment, then tap the right-arrow icon to insert the comment.

To review all the comments in a document: In both Android and iOS, tap the speech balloon icon at the upper-right corner to open the Comments panel. On this panel, you can scroll through all the comments in the document. Tap a comment to open it, and you can reply to it or mark it resolved.

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Howard Wen / Foundry

Making direct edits and rolling back edits from other collaborators

You and anyone you’ve assigned to be an Editor can edit your document — add, delete, or revise text, insert images, and so on. With multiple people editing the same document, it can be difficult to keep track of who’s done what, and you might not agree with all the changes that others have made. That’s where version history comes in. From the menu bar above your document, select File > Version history > See version history.

The “Version history” page shows a listing on the right side of older versions of your document. The tile for each version states the date and time when a major revision was made to your document and by whom.

When you click one of these dates, the version of your document that was saved at that time will appear in the main window. (If you want to give an older version of your document a unique name, click its date. You’ll then be prompted to type in words to replace the date.)

With version history, you can roll back to an earlier version of a document.
Howard Wen / Foundry

To restore an older version so it becomes the one that you and your collaborators will work on together, click the big Restore this version button at the top left of the page.

Suggesting edits in Docs

In Google Docs (but not Sheets or Slides), there’s a better way to keep track of changes made by your collaborators. Ask anyone with Editor status to turn on Suggesting mode by clicking the pencil icon at the right end of the toolbar above the document, then selecting Suggesting from the drop-down menu. (Anyone who has Commenter rights for a document will automatically be in Suggesting mode when they open it in Docs.)

With Suggesting mode turned on, suggested changes appear next to the original text or image rather than obscuring it.
Howard Wen / Foundry

Under Suggesting mode, any text added to your document by a collaborator appears as a particular color, and each collaborator gets a different color. If they add an image, the border of that image will be the same color as their text color. Anything they delete will have a strikethrough in their assigned color.

Note cards will appear to the right of your document; each lists a change made to your document, who made it, and when the changes happened. To accept the suggestion on a card, click the checkmark; to reject it, click the x.

You can accept or reject each suggested edit.
Howard Wen / Foundry

To view your document with or without all the edits suggested by your collaborators: From the menu bar, click Tools > Review suggested edits.

A box will open at the upper-right corner. To view your document with the suggested edits merged in, click Show suggested edits and select Preview “Accept all” from the drop-down menu. To view without the suggested edits, select Preview “Reject all.”

To accept or reject all suggestions at once: You can click the Accept All or Reject All buttons on this pane.

Whenever your document gets a suggested edit by a collaborator, an updated tally appears next to its filename on your Google Drive home page and in the Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides mobile apps. If you’re viewing your Google Drive page in Grid view, this tally appears over the thumbnail of your document.

This shared file has 6 suggested edits.
Howard Wen / Foundry

Collaborating on documents in real time

When you and one or more of your collaborators are viewing a document at the same time, their headshot or the icon for their user account will appear above the document, toward the upper right. They see your headshot or user account icon in the same area on their screen.

Whenever you or your collaborators add comments or make suggestions or edits in the document, the other people see the comments or these actions happen in real time.

You can chat with one another: Click the icon that’s directly to the right of the headshots of your collaborators. This opens a chat window in a side panel along the right of your document.

You can live-chat with colleagues as you work on a document together.
Howard Wen / Foundry

How to use shared drives

With most Google Workspace accounts, you can create shared drives. These work like your personal My Drive but can be accessed and managed by more than one person. Shared drives can be useful for storing and sharing documents that people collaborating on the same project, or working in the same department, need to use.

Creating a shared drive

If your organization supports shared drives, you’ll see a “Shared drives” item in the left column of your Google Drive home screen. To create a new shared drive, right-click Shared drives > New shared drive.

A pane opens prompting you to type in a name for your new shared drive. After you click the Create button, this new shared drive appears below “Shared drives.”

A new shared drive.
Howard Wen / Foundry

Adding other members to your shared drive

Next, you need to invite other people so that they can access the shared drive.

In the left column, double-click your shared drive. Click Manage members at the top of the page. In the pane that opens, enter the names or email addresses of your co-workers. Note that every person must have an account on your Google Workspace team or a Google user account.

Adding co-workers to a shared drive.
Howard Wen / Foundry

Click the Send button. These co-workers will get an email with a link that lets them access your shared drive.

By default, members you add to a shared drive will have Content manager access, which means they can upload, edit, move, or delete all files in the drive. But you can change the access level assigned to any member of the drive. Reopen the “Manage members” pane. To the right of each person’s name, you can click the Content manager dropdown to change the access level for that person. You can assign them to be a Viewer, Commenter, Contributor, or Manager instead.

Assigning permissions for a shared drive.
Howard Wen / Foundry

There are several differences among these titles. (Google lists them in a handy table.) Managers have full control over documents and other people’s access to the shared drive. Viewers can only view documents and open folders in your shared drive. The other three roles fall in between, with varying degrees of control over the shared drive and its contents.

Any member of the shared drive can access any document stored in it, and (depending on their access levels) multiple members can add documents and folders to the shared drive. For groups of people who need to access and collaborate on multiple documents, a shared drive is much more manageable than sharing documents or folders from their personal My Drives.

Sharing documents (or folders) in a shared drive with non-members

Sometimes you want to share a document or folder with people outside the team — without giving them access to the whole shared drive. Sharing a document or folder in a shared drive with somebody who is not a member is mostly the same process described earlier for sharing a document in My Drive. The main differences to keep in mind are these:

To share a document in a shared drive, you or a member of your shared drive must have at least Contributor access level. To share folders, you or the other member must have Content manager access.

Whether you share a folder privately with a non-member or create a publicly accessible web link to it, you can choose one of these user access levels for it: Viewer, Commenter, Contributor, Content manager, or Manager.

For more information about working with shared drives, see Google’s “Get started with shared drives” page.

This article was originally published in October 2017 and most recently updated in December 2025.

Related reading:

Google Docs cheat sheet

Google Sheets cheat sheet

Google Slides cheat sheet

More Google Workspace tips and tutorials