Save a shared Google Drive to my M1 MBA

[danb1979]

Sorry for asking this in here; if it's wrong please move it to the correct location...

I've started a new role with a company yesterday and their docs are all stored to a 'shared' Google Drive

Is there anyway I can save this directly to my MBA rather than having to access it via a web page all the time or is there no way around that?

When I open docs on it, it opens them in Googles own 'docs' rather than MS Word or Excel that I've got on my MBA

Plus when I send/reply to emails and need to send an attachment; I can't just access the shared Google Drive, I need to physically access it, download the doc I need to send on & then physically attach it to the email, to send etc...

Or am I going about it all the wrong way?!

Cheers ?

 

[Mr_Brightside_@]

Yes, you can do this using the Drive for Mac app. If you choose Stream in Preferences, it will only download the files you open. If you choose Mirror, it'll download everything, but be cautious you don't do this and fill your drive.

It does sound though like your company is Google Workspace, as opposed to Office 365, based. If that's the case, trying to use their docs with Office isn't going to go great for you or your colleagues and you're going to want to switch to doing everything (Gmail, docs creation and editing) via the browser.

 

[danb1979]

Yes, you can do this using the Drive for Mac app. If you choose Stream in Preferences, it will only download the files you open. If you choose Mirror, it'll download everything, but be cautious you don't do this and fill your drive.

It does sound though like your company is Google Workspace, as opposed to Office 365, based. If that's the case, trying to use their docs with Office isn't going to go great for you or your colleagues and you're going to want to switch to doing everything (Gmail, docs creation and editing) via the browser.

Cheers for that

It is Google Workspace; they all use MS laptops whereas I've stuck with an M1 MBA as I haven't used MS in over 15 years now!

Is there a way to resolve this or do I just get used to working it it all via the browser (Chrome)?

 

[Mr_Brightside_@]

Cheers for that

It is Google Workspace; they all use MS laptops whereas I've stuck with an M1 MBA as I haven't used MS in over 15 years now!

Is there a way to resolve this or do I just get used to working it it all via the browser (Chrome)?

I've got a few users who prefer Office, but we're a Google shop - unfortunately they have had to learn to live with Google (and I myself far prefer desktop apps vs doing everything in Chrome).
That said, yeah, fire up Chrome, sign in to your company account, and get to know Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Drive, etc. I'm not sure it's an overall better experience to O365 but I also don't think it's much worse (I changed over from O365 in my last position in the fall).