These days I’m getting ready with my girl leave, which will be structured, among other things, with an occasional joint document. No, no, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying our holidays will consist of writing lists, I mean we both love making them for all kinds of uses, and that affinity (among many others, of course) is in our very DNA our relationship. And I don’t rule out making more lists when we are together on those days.

In this case specifically We are creating a list with playlist music that we will listen to during the many hundreds of kilometers that we are going to travel by car, because far from choosing a single destination, we have decided to travel a large part of the Mediterranean coast, from there to go to the center and again to return to the lullaby of the ancient sea, to which Manolo García and They dedicated a song I’ve always loved to Quimi Portet (you can tell I have music in my head right now, right?)

Due to life circumstances, The problem is, we can’t do it when we’re together physically, in space.because at the moment we’re separated by a few hundred kilometers, that’s why we resorted to a collaborative document that allows us to edit simultaneously, see the annotations that each other makes, even play with the other party’s annotations… In short, it gives it some texture, which, without being the same as doing it in person, adds extra fun to the process.

The fact is that when it comes to It turns out how unusual it is for many people to use this type of resourcewhich got me thinking that there are actually more people who don’t know how to create, share and edit a shared document than I would have thought. And of course, given the possibility that many people may miss out on sharing these types of “spaces” just like us, I thought it would be interesting to explain in a very simple way how to create a shared document using Google Tools (I’ll explain it using Google Tools soon Microsoft.)

I’ll use a text document as an example, but the process is similar for other types of documents that can be created using Google’s office tools.

Google Workspace / Google Docs

Whether you use the free version of Google office tools or have a paid account and therefore Google Workspace, the basic functions for sharing and working on a collaborative document are the same, so you will be able to use them in any case.

The first thing is of course to create the document, which you have to do in the usual way, there is no difference because you create it first and then share it in a separate procedure. Therefore, prepare a text document, table or anything else (the procedure is similar in all cases):

IF you look closely, you’ll see that there’s a button in the top right corner that says “Share” and that it’s currently shown with a closed padlock. This icon will always indicate whether the document has been shared or not. Specifically, there are three possible states

The first, as you may have already deduced, indicates that the document has not been shared, so it is not a collaborative document at this point. The second tells us that only certain people have shared it, and the third tells us that it is universally available to anyone who knows how to access it.

To configure it, you need to click on the given button, at this point the configuration section will appear:

If you only want to share the document with one or more specific people, you’ll now need to start typing the names of those people in the top box, for example

As you can see, if you already have the given contact, Google will automatically suggest and complete it for you. Then click on it to confirm to show the next section

There are several important points in this step. The first is to edit the permissions you give the person on the document. In this regard, these are the three options:

• Reader: This, as you may have guessed, is the lowest level of permission, as this person will only be able to view the document, but not make changes or notes on it.
• Commentator: This level does not allow you to edit the document, but it does allow you to add notes to the document that the owner can review.
• Editor– This level provides full access to the document. This person can make any type of change to it without the owner having to verify it later.

In this case of course, as I said before I’m making a playlist for a road trip with my girlfriend, the logical permission level is Editor. Now, if we also want to share it with someone close to us (like those we’ll see on this trip), we can add them too, but in that case with commenter or reader permissions.

Of course, another important element is whether you should inform this person that you are sharing the document with them. To do this, check “Notify users” (note that you can add several at once, even with different levels of access) and use the central part to write the text of the message that they will receive:

If you have everything ready, click the “Send” button and you’ve already shared it almost immediately, so you can start working together on a common document.

This method is definitely the most recommended for sharing with one or a few people, but what if you want to make its reach much wider? In this case, instead of reproducing the previous process with each one, you can change the privacy of the document so that it is accessible to anyone who has the necessary link to access it.

To make this modification, you need to find the section

and as you may have deduced, click on “Restricted” and select “Anyone with a link”. Next, of course, you’ll need to adjust the level of permissions that all people who access through that link will have in the selector that appears on the right. The levels are the same as what we saw before when we share it with a person.

Now all that remains is to copy the access link to the document, for which you will have to click on the “Copy link” button located in the lower left corner and, of course, send it to these people in the way you see fit. All that remains is to close the configuration by clicking the “Done” button and you can immediately start working on the joint document.

Also keep in mind that you can share the same document in both ways and with different permissions. For example, you can add editors and commenters individually, and also generate a publicly accessible link, but with reader permission.

And yes, in case you’re still curious about the inside story of this tutorial, Ana was in charge of preparing the collaborative document for the music playlist in Spanish. Great gear, right?