

You can use this web viewer to view online files without having to download the files to your computer. Google Drive includes a built-in web viewer so people can view your shared files - from Microsoft Office documents to videos to AutoCAD drawings - directly in their browser. This is common knowledge but Google Drive has plenty of URL tricks up its sleeve that will make these simple Drive links even more powerful. Open any file in Google Drive, click the Share button and you’ll get a URL (link) that others can use to access your file.

With Google Drive, you can store files in the cloud and share them easily with anyone. Viewing users can choose and save a different sort order for themselves, if they want, but you can control the default order.Learn about secret URL tricks for Google Drive to quickly create direct download links, copy or preview shared files in Drive. There's one other big advantage to OneDrive from a content creator's point of view: you can chose a sort order, including manual sort, and save it to be the folder's default sort order for people viewing it. It's not too bad though, 5 clicks instead of 1.

If you're using the web view, you have to create the folders manually, then select all in your folder and upload the contents. The only downside I noticed in switching from Google Drive to OneDrive is, OneDrive's web view doesn't (currently) have a handy "Upload folders" option, like Google's. Or you can select and download individual folders.

Here's a screenshot from a shared folder viewed by someone with no account not logged in who simply followed a link:Ĭlicking that "Download" button with nothing selected simply downloads everything, as one zip file. This is how I'm solving the problem - it has exactly the feature I wish Google Drive had. Forget Google Drive and set up a free OneDrive account intsead.If bandwidth or file capacity isn't an issue, and if people will be happy with the choice between one-at-a-time downloads or everything-at-once downloads and nothing in between, this might be an acceptable compromise. Similar to Victor's suggestion: create folders as normal, and also, into your master folder, upload a massive ZIP file containing all the files, so that everyone can browse the files in Drive but non-Google "heretics" can also still download conveniently despite Google's efforts.Since the question is from the point of view of the person creating the shared folder, there are two workarounds I'm aware of: If you're the person receiving the shared folder, you're stuck. It honestly looks like if you're sharing with friends, family or colleagues who might not have Google accounts, Google wants the user experience to be bad. This still isn't possible in Google Drive, and, judging by the frosty response from Google when asked about it, it seems to be by design.
