How to Access Shared Google Drive Documents

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Documents shared with you through Google Docs can easily be accessed together with your other documents on Google Docs and Google Drive. You can access them from the websites or from the mobile apps. If you need to quickly see and access the shared documents in one location, you can do that from Google Drive’s website as it has a dedicated folder for them.

• You can open the Google Docs website to access Google Docs that have been shared with you.
• You can find all other shared Google Documents (such as Slides or Sheets documents) via the Google Drive website.
• Use either the Google Drive or Google Docs app and look for an icon of two people next to a listed to document to identify it as a shared document.

Web Browser (Google Docs)

• Upon logging in, you will be brought to the main view with all your documents listed and sorted.

Identify a shared doc. There’s no ready filter for identifying docs shared with you. There’s no central folder or location where shared docs are stored in Google Docs. However, you can easily identify shared docs by looking under the Owner column. Your owned docs have “Me” listed under the Owner column. Otherwise, you’ll see the Google name of the person who owns them.

Open a shared doc. Once you’ve identified a shared doc, click it once to open it. Depending on the access level assigned to you by the owner of the doc, you will be able to edit, comment, or view it.

Mobile App

• You will be brought to the main view with all your docs listed and sorted.

Identify a shared doc. Unlike on the website, there’s no column title on the mobile app and there’s no Owner column. However, you can still identify shared docs by looking for the icon with two heads right after the filenames. All the files that have this icon are shared files.

Open a shared doc. Once you’ve identified a shared doc, tap it to open it. Depending on the access level assigned to you by the owner of the doc, you will be able to edit, comment, or view it.

Web Browser (Google Drive)

Sign in. Under the Sign In box, type in your Gmail email address and password. This is your one Google ID for all of Google’s services, including Google Drive. Click the “Sign in” button to proceed.

• All the shared docs will be displayed with their Name, Shared By, Share Date, and Location information. The Shared By column tells you the Google name of the person who owns each doc.

Open a shared doc. Double-click on a shared document to open it. Depending on the access level assigned to you by the owner of the doc, you will be able to edit, comment, or view it.

Community Q&A

Someone has shared a word document with me and sent me a request. I don't know how to accept this request and open the shared document.

You will receive an email on the Gmail address the sender typed into the Google Docs share tool. From here you can view the document. You can also access a folder titled "Shared with me" on drive.google.com that will possess the shared document, regardless of whether or not you have opened it already.

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