Organizing Your Google Drive

As you work in Google Drive, your list of files will grow and grow. Thankfully, Google Drive gives you many options to organize your drive. Most people use folders for organization. You can also use features like stars and changing the color of files or folders to organize and quickly find information in Google Drive. But there’s another seldom-used method by way of a keyboard shortcut that also helps organize files and folders in Google Drive.

How Are Files Stored in Google Drive?

Before we talk about the keyboard shortcut, let’s think about how files actually exist in Google Drive. Most people think of files and folders in a tree-like structure, but that is not actually how Google stores files and folders. Instead, they are stored in a massive database with indexes to the addresses of the items/files. This structure allows more flexibility and quicker access time when looking among trillions of files in Google. Files and folders are marked with tags – and these tags contain data about the files. Turns out you can use a simple keyboard shortcut to tag files and folders in Google Drive.

Using the “Shift + Z” shortcut allows you to tag your files and folders to other places in your Google Drive. This means you can have your file in a folder that you normally work with, and tag it to also show up in a shared folder. This feature allows the file to be visible in two separate locations, not as copies of the file, but as the same file in two places. This trick is very useful if you have a particular way of working with files but someone you’re sharing them with has their own way of interacting them.

How to Tag Files and Folders in Google Drive

Ready to tag? Here’s how:

• Click the file or folder you want to tag to another location.
• Press “Shift + Z” on the keyboard (that’s the “Shift” key and the “Z” key at the same time).
• A selector will open asking where you’d like to tag the file to. Navigate to the other location.
• Once you have the new location selected click “Add.” Your file or folder is now present in both locations.

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