Google Drive - Searching for Items Part 1

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Thinking about organization within Google Drive takes a major mind shift.  Instead of thinking of it as the old filing system of organizing, we need to think about it as a tagging system. 

The old way, a file was physically located in one place, and there was only one way to retrieve it - by opening the drawer and going to the folder it was in. This method carried over to our computers, we organized exactly the same way.  The biggest difference is the filing cabinets and the folders within them could hold a whole lot more!

With Google's way, I tell people to just think of it as a really big room where everything is thrown together.  However, everything has colored sticky notes on it, and each sticky notes stands for something.  When you want to find something, you no longer "retrieve" it...you search for the sticky notes.  If you don't have good search skills, you can spend a long time looking through the files for the sticky notes.  If you have good search skills, you can find just about anything pretty quickly. 

So some keys to understanding searching with Google:
  • when you click on a "folder" you are actually doing a quick search for the label (think sticky note) attached - what you probably think of as the name of the folder
  • searching can focus on more the name of the file; you can also search for the person that created it, even words in the file itself - a whole lot of options, unlike the old filing system where you only could search for words in the file name
  • typing multiple terms in the search will find ALL files with ANY of the words
This is a general understanding of Google Searching.  My next several posts will share some ways to help you become a more targeted searcher, so you can find anything quickly.

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