How to Share a Google Doc?

November 10, 2021

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In this brief tutorial, you’ll find out the ways to share a Google Doc with different access permissions. We recommend you study this manual carefully and start practicing.

Checklist of crucial points we aim to highlight here:

Access the Sharing Menu
Sharing with a Limited Group
Giving Permissions
Other Settings
Document Public Sharing
Public Access Permissions

Watch the video from https://thegoodocs.com/ and see how to share a Google Doc: How to Share a Document on Google Docs | Sharing Google Docs - YouTube.

Sharing the Google document is the fundamental feature of Google Docs since the service is meant for real-time collaborative work by multiple people.

The basics are that you give different users different permissions to work with a shared file, such as only view, editing, and commentator modes.

NB! Also, note that you can manage such permissions only for the files created within your Drive by you.

Access the Sharing Menu

First of all, there are 3 steps to access the sharing menu for the document, and they all start on your Google Drive.

Step 1

Locate the file on your Drive but don’t open it yet. Click on it once, and on the top right corner, you’ll see new buttons appear. You need the second of them, a person with a plus icon

Press it, and the sharing menu will pop out in front of you

Step 2

The following method is to simply click on the document with a right mouse button and select the third Share item on the list. Then you will get the same window

Step 3

The last sharing method is performed from the document itself, so open it. From here, go to the top right corner and press the blue Share button. And the same menu pops out

If you don’t have such a button, you may have closed the top menu. And to open it, you will need to find such a button on the right and click it (you will see on the screenshot). There you go

Sharing with a Limited Group

Now we’ll talk about giving different permissions to different users regarding their interaction with the document. There’s plenty of ways how you can organize teamwork within a particular document.

To start, open the Share menu with one of the 3 ways mentioned above. You will see that you are designated as its owner. At the moment, only you have access to the document since it's created in a private mode

From here, you have 2 menus for sharing. The top one means sharing a document with a limited group of people by entering their emails

Now you need an email of the person that you want to share the document with. Let us type any sample email
Google shows that the user has a Google account. So, press it, and the person is added. Then you can keep adding new members via email

Giving Permissions

The most important part now is giving specific permission to a user. To do that, drag the cursor to the button next to the typing field and press it. Now you can assign a particular role to every single user:

the Viewer mode, where a person can only view the document and comments and download the document, but not change anything in it
the Commenter mode that does not allow the person to edit the document as well but allows to write and post comments to certain parts of the document
the Editor mode, where the person will have complete access to edit the document

Now you can add users and assign each one different access permissions.

Other Settings

Also, for every single user, you can write an invitation message and select whether you want to notify him/her and other people, which means the invitation message will go to the person’s email address. So, press Send so that a person will be notified

NB! What’s nice about this sharing method is that the document remains in restricted access mode but can be accessed by only certain users chosen by you.

By the way, we can go to the advanced sharing settings by pressing this cog icon and modify such settings for editors and viewers

Document Public Sharing

Otherwise, the second sharing way does not require people to have an email address and Google account. Only a link to the document.

Once again, open the share menu and drag the cursor to the second separated window named Get link and press the button with text on it

NB! What just happened was that you have opened access to the document via the link meaning that anyone with whom you will share this link will be able to access the document.

Copy this link with the special Copy link button and then send it to the people you want to share it with

Public Access Permissions

And next here come the access permissions as well, which are the same but are applied to everyone with a link and not just specific users, making it more widely available.

Drag the cursor to the right button with a Viewer text on it and press it. The same works here — you can open only a viewing mode, commenter mode, or full editing mode, but this time with no specific users

Select the option you need (Viewer, Commenter, Editor; we will choose Viewer on the screenshot, as a sample), copy the link, and share it with people you work with on this document. And press Done

We hope this tutorial will help you understand how to share a Google Doc. Good luck!

Written by

Team TheGoodocs

We are a team of creative people who dream of sharing knowledge and making your work and study easier. Our team of professional designers prepares unique free templates. We create handy template descriptions for you to help you choose the most suitable one. On our blog, you'll find step-by-step tutorials on how to use Google Products. And our YouTube channel will show you all the ins and outs of Google products with examples.