 Hello and welcome. This is Carrie Quick Carell, and today we'll be exploring how to organize and locate items in your Google Drive. Google Drive is a web app that can be used to create and store your files. Before we get started, don't forget to subscribe to our channel by clicking our logo during the video. Also, feel free to give us feedback or check out our related videos by clicking the pop-up cards in the upper right-hand corner. To get started, let's talk about the basic structure of Google Drive and compare it to something you're already familiar with. And that's your good ol' computer desktop screen. We're all familiar with organizing our computer desktop screen. Whether we are organized and every time we create a file, we name it and place it neatly in a folder, or whether our desktop is just slam-packed with all the files we've ever created. Either way, let's take a look at Google Drive, which is very similar to a computer desktop, and keep that in mind as we go through. Keep that analogy in thinking how Google Drive works very similar to the way that you save and organize items on your computer's desktop. The benefit of Google Drive over your computer desktop is that when you see files here, they're accessible on any device. So I can get to my files here on my computer. I could go to a different building on a different computer, log in and see my drive files. I could log in on my cell phone and get my files there as well. So my drive definitely has benefits over your computer desktop. Once you're in my drive, if you're anything like me, my desktop is the one that is quite full of icons. So similarly, my Google Drive had hundreds and hundreds of files just hanging out here on this screen. So what I did to get organized, I used a couple of different tricks. The first trick was organizing my folders. OK, so instead of just having tons and tons of individual files, I started putting things into generally named folders. To do that, you can click on new over here in the top left corner. You can add a new folder here. You can give your folder a name and then create your folder. Once you create a folder, it pops up with this general grayish color. So another trick that I utilize is some of my right click options. So if I right click on my folder, one of my options is to change the color to something that stands out a little better. I can rename my folder with that right click option and I can move some individual files into that folder to kind of tidy up my Google Drive. OK, so if I want to move a file, again, I can use those right click options. I can right click on an individual file. I can select move to and once I click move to, it tells me the names of all my folders so I can click on a folder and click move here. That's kind of the long way about it. So what I can do if I know I want this file to go in this folder, I can click and drag it and drop it into that folder. I'm looking for that blue indicator line to let me know that's OK to put it there. If I try and put it somewhere up here, you see, I have nowhere to drop it, but that blue indicator lets me know I can place it in that folder. OK, so I can start to clean up by moving by dragging and dropping items into that folder. OK, another tip I'd like to share with you. This is my go to tip. If you've ever had that feeling of I know I created something, I put it in my Google Drive and now I have no idea where it is. Then this is a tip for you. This is what you've been waiting for. So the big issue that I hear and people come and ask me, I know someone shared it with me, I know I created it, worked on it for hours. Now I can't find it. This is for you. So it seems very simple, but it's actually utilizing this search bar up here. OK, so again, seems really simple, but we're really going to dig into this here to find exactly what you're looking for. So let's say I am looking for a file. I know I created it after Kagan training. It was something with Kagan as I start to type the letters in. So I'm going to search for a key term. You notice as I start typing, as I start putting in the letters, it's populating a list of anything that has those letters from contact emails to documents that you see below here, anything that has that keyword. Now, some people feel inclined to start to search through this list. But that's going to get really frustrating. This is just a real quick reference list. Google hasn't really searched through everything. So I would encourage you don't look for it in this list. Just type in your key word that you're looking for and then hit enter. Once you've hit enter, Google Drive has now searched every corner of my Google Drive. It has searched in the shared with me folder. It is searched in the starred folder. It's searched in the folder that I didn't even know I had. And it has populated this page of the most relevant items for my search. OK, so again, my search word was Kagan, and it's sorted here by relevance. OK, so it doesn't really look like I can click on it. But you see when I hover over the word relevance, it kind of highlights it gray. So I can click relevance and I can sort by relevant titles. So you'll see what pops up first are items with my keyword Kagan in the name. If I scroll down, the less relevant items. So this item might not have Kagan in its title. However, it must have the word Kagan somewhere within that file. So it's not just searching titles. It's searching for that keyword anywhere. So that's sorted by relevance. I can also sort by last modified. And then that will give me items that deal with this keyword. And also it's things that I've edited recently. OK, so my last modified items. So you can sort and filter there. If Kagan is not specific enough for you, if you're like, yeah, it's not going to help. I mean, I really forgot. I don't know what it's called at all. Then we can use the search bar as advanced features. OK, to do that, I'm going to click on this drop down arrow that's attached to my search bar. And here, if I know it has the word Kagan in it and I know that it was a presentation, then I can click these drop downs and I can get real specific here. So I can look for a Kagan presentation. If I know it was a doc, maybe I was taking notes. I know it's in a doc. I can search a document. If I know it was a PDF file that someone shared with me, I can search specifically for just PDFs so I can pick my file type here. And so now it's going to look for presentations that have my keyword. If I know that I made it. So in those situations where you're like, I spent three hours last night working on this and now it's gone, I can say that it's owned by me. I made this, I worked on it. I know it was a presentation. I know it's got that word in it. And so now it's going to drill down my search more specifically. If I have a guess which area it's in, I can even search here. So if I know it was in my drive, if I know it was in a team drive or if it was in shared with me, I can get more specific with this drop down. If I think I accidentally threw it away, I can search my trash. I can search my starred area. If I know I worked on it last night, then I can say yesterday. I worked on it yesterday. Help me find it so I can get really, really specific here. You can see that my keyword goes in the box as it has the words. So it's not just searching titles. It's searching for this word wherever it may be. So at this point with what I've clicked on, it is searching for files owned by me that are a presentation that contain that keyword. I can click search. And now I've drilled down to more specifically only presentations where I am the owner and it has this keyword in it. OK, if I know that someone specifically shared it with me, so maybe I'm looking for a presentation that a specific person shared with me, I can type their email in here and it will search for that specific person. So any file that's a presentation with that keyword associated with that person, we can get very specific here. That is how I find items. So my Google Drive until very recently looked quite a mess. But now I've got it under control. I've got it organized and I use this search bar any time I'm trying to find anything. I never click through a folder. I never scroll through and look and look and look and look. I just go to my search bar and I can get real specific there and find exactly what I'm looking for. Now I could go on and on about Google Drive. So if you have any specific questions, please let me know. We are here for you. I hope this was helpful. Again, today we were looking at organizing and finding items that stored in our Google Drive. 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