8 helpful hacks to unleash the benefits of Google Drive

Your colleague shares a file with the team via email for their feedback. While you're making an edit, so are your colleagues. Before you know it, you have seven edited versions of the original file. Sound familiar? Google's sophisticated online file storage and synchronisation service, Google Drive, solves this problem. With this tool, teams can view, share and edit Word documents, spreadsheets and presentations simultaneously, in real-time, from any device, anywhere.

Use these helpful hacks to use it like a pro.

If you're partial to working in a cab on the way to meeting, or while waiting for your flight at the airport, enable Google Drive's offline editing feature. You won't be able to sync files without an internet connection, but you can still access and edit documents with this handy feature. Simply turn on the 'Offline Sync' function within 'Settings' while you still have connectivity. As soon as you are back online, your files will update in the cloud.

Having everyone working on the same document supports collaboration - but what happens when you want to see what's changed and who changed it? View and restore previous versions of any file by clicking on 'Version History' within the 'File' menu.

When you drop a Google Drive file from your desktop into the 'Trash' you can still access it online. While this is one way to avoid deleting an important document, it's not the best way to manage your account's storage space. To really delete files for good, go to Google Drive on the web and empty the trash there.

In the past, I've lost minutes, and even hours, clicking between my browser and my email inbox every time I wanted to check or query something on a file. This was until I realised you can send an email direct from Google Drive. Simply type the '+' symbol, and the email address of the person you want to email, in a comment and they'll be notified by email.

If you can't remember the name of a file, but you know who shared it with you, then click on 'Shared with Me' in the menu for a list of all the documents you share access to. Type the collaborator's name in the search field to narrow down the results.

Because every second counts, Google Drive even has a shortcut to see the most frequently used keyboard shortcuts to help get you where you want to go fast. To find the list without opening another browser, click Ctrl + / (Windows) or Command + / (Mac).

Google Drive's 'File Upload' function means you can use it in a similar way to Dropbox - as a storage tool for everything, not just files you've created or collaborated on. For example, there's a Chrome extension that enables you to save Gmail messages and attachments directly into a Google Drive folder. You can also drag and drop documents from your desktop into the relevant file.

Rather than cutting and pasting - or worse, retyping a document - Google Drive lets you convert PDFs and text images to text. Simply upload the PDF and select 'Open with Word' - it might need some tidying up, but it's still a huge time-saver.

Chances are you already regularly work with Google Drive in some capacity, but as you can see, there's more to this service than meets the eye.

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