With spring almost upon us I wanted to give a few tips to you for clearing up your Google Drive. It is pretty normal for most of us to find that our Google Drive has become a hot mess of files and folders and these can make finding and editing your documents more difficult.

Remove Untitled Documents/Sheets/Slides

If you do a search of your google drive you will probably find a lot of documents called “Untitled”

I just checked my drive and I have 12 “untitled documents”. How do I know which of these can be deleted (removed from drive)? If you click the Grid View Icon  you will see that list as a bunch of thumbnails. Pick the ones that are blank or you know you can delete and remove them. read more

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If you use Google Slides, you probably already know that you can insert videos into your Slides from YouTube, by URL, and Google Drive. But did you know that with an extension, you can add your own video to any slide? This could include your face, voice, student’s work, etc. Consider using this for explaining directions, doing an experiment, showcasing examples, and more.

Here are the steps to get started: 

1. Visit the Chrome web store and download the Record to Slides extension.

2. You will see a video camera icon appear in the top corner of Slides. Note: If you are currently in a Slides presentation when you add this, you may need to refresh Slides if it doesn’t appear right away. Click on it when you are ready to start your recording. read more

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Way back in 2018, Kim introduced you to a new Google Sheets feature called checkboxes. And then in 2019, Julianne explained how to use the COUNTIF function to… well… count things. In today’s Tech Tip, I’m going to show you how to combine these two features for a super-handy function that will help with tracking data.

In case you missed Kim and Juli’s tips, they should be linked above.

Here’s a quick review on how to add checkboxes to your Google Sheet: read more

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Google has recently rolled out the Watermark feature to Google Docs. You can use this feature to put your school’s logo, a fun picture, the words draft or confidential, or anything into the background of your document. 

Open a new Google Doc or even an existing Google Doc. Go to your Insert Menu and select Watermark.

This will bring up the Watermark menu off to the side of your Google Doc.

Click on the option to select your image. You can choose any image from Google Drive, Google Image Search, your Camera, or more. read more

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Seeing is believing, right?! A chart can turn data into a powerful visual to help analyze and track trends. Google Sheets offers a wide range of chart types: column charts, pie charts, line charts, bar charts, scatter plots, and others.

One of the “others” I like to use to reference data in a Sheet quickly is a table chart.  Sometimes I will even use both, a more traditional chart like a bar chart and a table chart.

A table chart places the selected columns/rows into a graph where the data can be easily accessible. read more

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