What’s changing
You can already make
Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides files available offline. Now, as part of a new beta, you can mark also PDF, image, Microsoft Office, and other non-Google files for offline access using Google Drive on Chrome.
To learn more about the beta and to apply,
see here.
Who’s impacted
Admins and end users
Why you’d use it
This feature helps complete the offline experience for Google Drive. Now, users can access their important non-Google files in an offline setting, like when they’re traveling or when there’s poor internet connectivity.
How to get started
- End users:
- First, enable offline from within the Drive or Docs settings.
- Next, sign into Chrome with the account associated with the whitelisted Google Group and access Drive File Stream.
- To mark the non-Google files as available offline, right click on a file and select “Make available offline.” You can use the offline preview feature as well.
Additional details
Note that while this feature is not currently supported in ChromeOS, we’re working on bringing these offline capabilities to ChromeOS in the future.
Additionally, users can also right click and open any non-Google files
using native applications. By doing so, you can make an Office file available offline and—while offline—open that file using the native Microsoft Office application.
Helpful links
Availability
G Suite editions - Available to all G Suite editions
On/off by default? - Once accepted into the beta, this feature is ON by default when:
- Offline is enabled for the domain.
- Users have Drive File Stream installed and offline is enabled in Google Drive or Google Docs settings.
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