You can easily enable offline viewing of any Google Docs documents. By default this ability is turned off, so you may want to enable it for emergency situations if you rely on Google Docs for viewing and editing important files. Keep in mind that you must be using Google’s Chrome web browser to do this. Chrome can be downloaded here. Also note spreadsheets can only be viewed, not edited, using this method.

To do this, go to your Google Drive and click the More button along the left side, under the Create button. This will open a small dropdown menu that includes the Offline option. Select this, and then follow the simple instructions to enable offline mode. This really involves just two clicks and some waiting. Once you have selected the Enable Offline button, you’ll have to wait some time so that all of your documents can be downloaded to your computer for offline storage. All offline documents will be listed in the Offline section once this is done.

If you want to disable offline editing for any reason, simply click the gear icon toward the top right of Google Drive and select Disable offline.

 

 

Helen Bradley