Everyone has their ways of keeping track of things - from the cluttered person who knows exactly where that missing assignment is, to the organized one who has a home for every paper. With high school demanding teens to keep track of projects, assignments, and tests, staying organized is more relevant than ever.
These methods of organization came to me as I figured my way throughout high school, and are fine-tuned to the way that best fits my needs. I don’t claim to know everything about Google Drive, but I hope that these tips can be useful to you!
First off, I like to go to the homepage of my Drive. That way, I can analyze what kinds of documents I have. A good overview of all your files can help you start to visualize which ones to group together. From there, I like to create folders to store my files in.
Disclaimer: This is how I like to organize my files, and create folders from; if you don’t like it, adjust it to you and/or your school’s needs. I understand that different schools call for different ways of organizing files. If so, check out my tips at the bottom of the page, and see if those can come to use!
To start, organize it by grade/year. Create a folder for each grade you are/have been in. If you’d like, you can create these folders as you go (that way you don’t have empty ghost-folders sitting for two years). This will allow you to separate the materials and resources you have, by when you’ve used them. I find this to be useful, as you can choose which years to look at as well as easily remember where something is. If you attribute a useful worksheet to 9th Grade, you can sort your way through your 9th Grade files, eliminating your search time through other files instantly.
Next, create sub-folders for each subject you took. Remembering your block schedule throughout the school day can help. If you have subjects such as Athletics that don’t require online documents, you can skip them entirely.
Once you create these class folders, you can begin dragging and dropping your files by subject and grade/year. This can be tedious, but I have some tech-hacks that can help speed up this process at the bottom of this post.
Additionally, if you are a part of any clubs, I recommend making a folder for them on the same page as your grade/year folders. That way, if you stay in this club for another year, all your files related to it are accessible in one place. For example, as Social Media Officer for FBLA, I have many files. I created a FBLA folder next to my year/grade folders and from there, created a 10th Grade & 11th Grade folder.
My 10th grade year, I was only required to create a presentation, so keeping it separate was useful. In 11th grade, I served an officer position and participated in a presentation. By keeping the folders separated by school year, I was able to keep relevant files grouped for easy access during our busy meetings or study sessions.
See if you can put related files in a subsection folder. For example, if I know that my English teacher makes us create a new document every day for warm-ups, I can expect to pile up multiple documents in a folder. These subsections can be grouped with useful titles such as:
- Warmups
- Projects
- Resources
- Rough Drafts
- Final Drafts
- Pictures
- Audio
If there is an essential Google Slides, PDF, or resource that your teacher constantly refers to on the daily, it may be beneficial to place it closer to your home page, as it is the first page you see in your Drive. You can also put it in under the grade/year folder. This way, it is more central to the drive than other files.
There we go! This should leave your Drive more organized than before, and leaves room for customization as you’d like.
Now time for some tips!
1. Selecting Multiple Files/Folders
Hold the ‘Ctrl’ button while clicking each folder and/or file you’d like to select. By doing so, you can select files that may be far away in list-view.
Alternatively, if the files you’d like to select are next to one another/are stacked, hold ‘Shift’ while clicking the first file in order, then the last file in order. This will allow you to select all the files in between the two files you chose.
2. Color Coding
Google Drive has colors! I know, insane. It took me a while to find out this feature. To color-code your files, click a file you’d like to change. Right-click on the file then select ‘Change color’ from the drop-down menu. Lastly, choose from the 24 different colors, and you are set! I recommend coloring the essential files or the files that are most similar yet unique, as there are limited colors. This way it’s easier to differentiate the unique folders that would otherwise be mistaken for one another. Or, color the files that you use more frequently so that selecting and seeing the difference between them is easier.
3. Use List View While Sorting
There are two different ways of viewing files in Google Drive: Grid view and list view. When sorting through multiple files in one sitting, it may be more convenient to sort them by Title rather than Preview Image of the document. To change to list view, go to the upper-right hand corner. If you are in a grid view, you will see an icon that looks like a check-list. If you are in list view, you should see an icon that looks like a grid, meaning you are already in list view. Choose which view you like best while organizing, but I highly recommend list view.
4. Starring Files
Starring files can allow you to separate files you have from other regular work. This can be used to mark which files are currently work in progress, drafts, important, etc. To do this, right-click a file and click the ‘Add to Starred’ button from the drop-down menu. This should in turn ‘star’ your file, adding it to another tab on your Drive called ‘Starred’ with a star icon (this should be on the left-hand side within the menu list). All future files that are “Starred” will be found in this tab, in a separate page to your Drive. Be sure to ‘unstar’ items that you are done with so that this tab doesn’t clutter, as it is easy to do if not maintained.
5. Periodically Delete Unneeded Files
Once in a while, there are those files that you use temporarily or opened up once just to leave abandoned. These files can quickly add up, making it easy to confuse with important files and taking up storage. For busy students especially, it is easy for it to pile up, as we don’t have time to upkeep with our Drive every moment we have. Whether it’s a month or at the end of every grading period, take time to mark your calendars to do this. In the long run, it’ll leave your Drive looking spotless and easy to navigate!
6. Name Your Files ASAP
Lastly, naming your files can be a game-changer for organization. I am surprised by the number of people who leave their documents unnamed. That often leaves them with no trace of the document they were working on, and searching for it harder. If you immediately name your document right before you close out of it, searching for it later will be much easier. Google will automatically title your document by pulling the first sentence from it. Simplify it by naming it yourself! (It’ll sound and look much better this way) To change the name of any Google document, go to the top-left hand corner. There should be some icon, whether it’s the Docs, Slides, or Sheets icon; next to it on the right should be a title box, where clicking on it will allow you to edit it. Say goodbye to your Drive cluttered with unnamed documents everywhere!
Hopefully, this guideline on how to organize your drive was helpful. If you found any of the tips useful or would like to leave other tips behind for readers, please leave a comment down below. Having an organized Drive for school has helped me on so many occasions, and I hope it does for you too!
- Emi
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