Drive

What you'll do

Share a folder in Drive and choose what its sharing covers. Along the way: add a shortcut to someone else's file, start a chat with a folder's files attached, and find files faster by sorting and filtering.

Drive's sidebar is grouped into My Drive, Shared, and Connectors, so your own files, the files shared between you and others, and any connected drives each have their place.

Step-by-step

1. In Drive, open the menu on the folder you want to share and choose Share.
2. Choose who can access it: Everyone in the Cloud, or Specific People.
3. Under Apply Sharing To, pick what the sharing covers:
   • This folder only
   • This folder and everything I own in it
   • This folder and items I choose, then pick the items
4. Select Save.

To choose individual items, share one folder at a time.

How a shared folder behaves

• Teammates' files keep their own sharing. Items other people added to the folder are left as they set them, whichever option you pick.
• New files follow the folder. Uploads, new folders and new documents inside a shared folder take its sharing, and you stay the owner.
• Moving asks first. Moving something into a folder that is shared differently asks whether to give it the folder's sharing or keep its own (Keep current sharing).
• Narrowing access tells you first. If a change removes people, Drive says "Some people will lose access" before you save, and anything they added to the folder goes back to their My Files.

For files and folders you own, you can also change sharing straight from the list: click the sharing level in the Access column.

Shortcuts to files you don't own

Choose Add shortcut from the menu on someone else's file or folder to place a link to it in your own Drive. The shortcut carries a Shortcut badge.

Moving or deleting a shortcut leaves the original untouched. When you remove one, Drive confirms "Shortcut removed. The original file is unchanged."

Chat with a whole folder

Choose Chat from a folder's menu to start a new chat with up to 25 of its files attached. Remove any you don't need before you send.

• A folder with more than 25 files adds the first 25, and Drive tells you so.
• If some files can't be read, Drive says "Couldn't read some files, so they weren't added to the chat."

Finding files

• Sort by any column. Click the Name, Owner, Size, Access or Created heading.
• Filter by more than one type. The file-type buttons above your files let you pick several at once, like Word and PDF. An MD filter finds Markdown files. The same filters work when you browse a connected Google Drive, OneDrive or Microsoft 365 from Drive.
• Preview Word files. Word documents open in the preview without leaving Emerge.ai.
• Move with confidence. When you move a file, the folder list separates My Folders from Shared Folders and marks the ones you can only view.

Definitions

• Shared folder — a Drive folder you have shared with other people. What its sharing covers is set by Apply Sharing To.
• Shortcut — a link in your Drive to a file or folder someone else owns. It is not a copy.
• My Files — your own files in Drive. Items someone added to a folder return here if they lose access to it.

Related topics

• Your first chat — adding files from Drive to a chat
• Set up a connector — browsing a connected drive from Drive
• Data retention — what deleting a file does
• Troubleshooting