I have a university email address that i use for corresponding with my colleagues and my students. I have a regular old Gmail account that i use for my personal email. I keep these two addresses separate. I don’t use my work email for personal email, and i don’t use my Gmail for work.
Students sometimes send me drafts of their papers, so i can help them improve their analysis and their writing. I ask them to do this by sending a file attachment, any one of a variety of file types (.docx, .pdf, .odt, .rtf, .txt).
Some of them, of course, fail to read the instructions and instead send me a Google Docs link. The email comes to my university (.edu) email address. In each case, there is a button in the email that says “Open in Docs.” When i click on the button, however, i can’t see the document. The Google Docs page that opens tells me “You need permission” and that i should either request access or use an account that has permission.
I’ve used Google Docs a few times, but never to share. What’s going on here? Are the students doing something wrong in the sharing process?
As i said, they’re supposed to send me attachment files directly anyway, but what would we have to do for me to see the documents if i was willing to accept them? Would they have to send them to my Gmail address? Is that the only way to share Google Docs?
…this happens often to me. Google sharing can be a pain in the arse.
You are logged into your browser with your gmail credentials.
The students have shared their documents with your university (.edu) email address, not your gmail account.
So when you click to open the shared link, it logs you into your gmail account, see’s your gmail account doesn’t have permission, and deny’s you access to the link. Its a pain in the arse.
When I’ve needed this fixed I’ve gone back to the person sending me the file and I tell them to resend it to my gmail account, which works fine for me. Looking at this link you have two other options: telling them to send you the file as an attachment, or the least secure method would be asking them to send it to an unsecured link. There are probably other ways around it as well.
Google Docs should be viewable by “anybody who has the link”, as long as the person who shares them chooses the right option.
I just tried this out. When they click “Share” on the Google Doc, they should get a pop-up that says “Share with others”. Under this is a box to enter “names or email addresses”. This seems to be what they are doing in your case, and it’s not the right option.
What they need to do is, on the same pop-up, click “Get shareable link” (in the top right corner of the pop-up). That then provides a hyperlink that they can copy and email to you. There are various options, so that anyone with that link can either view, edit or comment on the file. The default is to view only.
(A shorter route is, from their Google Drive directory, they can right-click on the file in question and then choose “Get shareable link” directly from the menu that appears.)
Thanks folks. I thought it might be something like that.
If i were to start accepting Google Docs like this, i would have to tell them to use the “Get sharable link” option, because i’m not interested in handing my personal Gmail address out to my students. I like to keep work and private life separate. I could, i guess, set up a new Gmail specifically for teaching, but i’d prefer not to do that either.
Anyway, having used Google Docs myself a couple of times, i know that it is very easy to export and download as a document in a variety of file formats. That’s what they’re supposed to be doing.
You can create a google account that uses your .edu email address as the Id… Just click “I prefer to use my current email address” during setup. No need to set up a new GMail account.
For what it’s worth, Google Docs might make it easier for you to comment on or write suggestions on their papers. You can highlight any particular section and either 1) edit it directly, 2) edit it as a suggestion, and/or 3) leave a comment about it. Kinda like the Track Changes feature in Word, but it all lives in the cloud. Very convenient for revisions and collaboration. They get notified once you’ve made comments or changes, so no need to go back and forth with printouts.
Are you sure your university doesn’t already use G Suite (Google Apps) for Education? Many have moved to it and that makes student/teacher sharing a lot easier (it just autocompletes names and emails when they try to share with you). You can also use Google Classroom with it to collect all your assignments in one place, grade them all there, keep everything organized, etc.
