How to Enable Offline Mode in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides

[The AchieVer]

How to Enable Offline Mode in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides

 

The battle for the best web-based productivity suite is getting fiercer, especially because most companies investing in such products come up with more and more improvements aimed at customers, regardless of the platform they use.

This is actually one of the biggest benefits of a web-based Office suite: you’re not tied to a specific platform, and a browser is pretty much everything you need.

But on the other hand, since everything runs on the servers belonging to the company offering the service, an Internet connection is necessary during this whole time, otherwise you can’t make any changes to your documents.

Google knows this best, as the search giant has been offering Docs, Sheets, and Slides to users, requesting them to always be online when working with documents.

Today, however, everything changes, as Google is implementing a highly anticipated feature that finally enables offline mode in G Suite.
 

 

 

The way this feature works is as simple as it could be: when an Internet connection isn’t available, all the changes that you make to documents are saved locally. When you go back online, Google takes care of the whole thing and automatically syncs documents with the ones in the cloud.

“We know it’s important for users to access and work on their files while traveling or when there’s low connectivity. With offline mode, it’s now possible to create, edit, and comment on Docs, Sheets, or Slides files. Any changes made to files while offline will then sync in Drive once the user is connected again,” Google explains.

Users need to manually enable this feature, and fortunately, it all takes just a few clicks.

The first thing you need to do is to head over to Google Drive (drive.google.com) and then click Settings > General. Look for an option called Sync Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drawings files to this computer so that you can edit offline and enable it. Save your settings and you’re good to go.

As a summary, the steps that you need to follow are these:

Google Drive > Settings > General > Sync Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drawings files to this computer so that you can edit offline > Enable
 

 

 

Google also allows users to configure an existing document so that it’s available offline. To do this, just right-click on any file > Available offline > Enable. The company explains the following:

“When offline access is enabled, Google Drive also automatically and intelligently makes a certain number of Google Docs/Sheets/Slides files available offline based on how recently you accessed them. You can preview which files are already available offline automatically using the offline preview mode. You can also mark a file available offline, so that it always remains available offline, while in offline preview mode, as long as you are connected.”

At this point, all end users and admins need to manually enable the offline access on their devices, but on the other hand, the feature is turned on by default on all Chromebooks.

What’s also important to have in mind is that Google is currently in the process of pushing this feature to all of its customers, and the company uses a gradual rollout. In other words, not everyone may see the offline mode, but it should appear in the settings screen shortly.

Google’s planned release indicates that the rollout should complete in approximately 15 days for Rapid Release domains, while the release to Scheduled Release domains is due to kick off on May 21, and it could also take longer than 15 days before it is completed.

 

 

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