add these Chrome extensions that power Google Driveyou’ll get it to work faster and smarter with Google Drive and Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides productivity apps.
Google Drive is a powerful business tool in its own right, especially when associated with Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides. But various Chrome browser extensions can add more file management features and other tricks to Google’s cloud storage and office apps.
If you use Google Drive regularly through Chrome or Chrome OS, consider adding the following extensions to make working with Drive and Google productivity apps more efficient and productive.
1. AwesomeDrive for Google Drive
If you use Microsoft Office and store your Office documents in Google Drive, this is a must. Once the extension is installed in Chrome, you can open an Office document from Google Drive and it will load into the Microsoft Office application (Excel, PowerPoint, Word) that is installed on your computer.
After editing and saving the document in Office, the new version will be saved back to Google Drive. Therefore, AwesomeDrive saves you from having to manually download your Office documents from Google Drive and re-upload them after you’ve worked on them in Microsoft Office.
2. Checker Plus for Google Drive / 3. Drive Anywhere
allows you to access Google Drive and manage your files without opening the Google Drive home screen in a Chrome tab. Clicking the Checker Plus icon on the Chrome toolbar opens a panel showing your files on your Google Drive. Here you can browse or search for files, as well as delete or rename them.
Clicking on a file name will open the document in the corresponding Google Office app within a new browser tab. You can also copy shareable web links to files, star items to make them easy to track, and upload files from your computer to Google Drive.
Plus, Checker Plus can alert you whenever a file in your Google Drive (like a document you’ve shared with someone to edit) is changed. These alerts are sent as notification cards that appear in the lower right corner of your computer’s desktop and from the Checker Plus icon in the Chrome toolbar.
it is similar to Checker Plus, but with fewer features to manage your files. So why would you consider using it? Drive Anywhere allows you to download your files through its toolbar panel, something you can’t do through Checker Plus.
4. Omni Drive
While Checker Plus and Drive Anywhere provide a quick way to find files in Google Drive without having to open the Drive home screen first, it makes it even faster by adding the ability to search your Drive files directly from the Google Drive address bar. Chrome (the “Omnibox” in Google parlance).
Write the word Unit in the address bar, followed by a space. As soon as you type that space, “OmniDrive” will appear at the top of the address bar. Now type the file name or a word or phrase in the document that you want to find in Google Drive and hit Enter. Your Google Drive page opens in the browser window and displays the search results.
A word of warning: this extension hasn’t been updated in several years, but it still works and its code is publicly available as open source.
5. Quick Google Docs Creation
This extension allows you to quickly start a new Google Drive document, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing or form. Click the icon in the Chrome toolbar and a panel will open showing the icon shortcuts. Click one to launch the corresponding Google Drive office app (Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, etc.) within a new browser tab.
6. Open with Google Drive Viewer
This extension can be convenient for viewing documents and other files that are on the web without having to download them first. By right-clicking on the web link to the document and selecting in the panel that opens, the extension will load the linked document in the corresponding Google office application. (You may need to reload your browser tab for the document to appear, especially if it’s a .ppt file.)
Supported files include Microsoft Office formats (.doc / .docx, .ppt / .pptx, .xls / .xlsx), as well as .txt and .zip files, PDFs, and more.
7. Office Edition for Docs, Sheets, and Slides
The Google extension is useful if you work with Microsoft Office documents frequently, but prefer to use the Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides apps.
When you drag and drop a Word, Excel, or PowerPoint file that’s stored on your computer into a Chrome browser window, it will automatically load into the corresponding Google office app for you to view and edit, so a . doc / .docx open in Google Docs, .xls / .xlsx in Google Sheets, and .ppt / .pptx in Google Slides.
Simply drag and drop Office-formatted files into Chrome, and they’ll open for editing in Docs, Sheets, or Slides.
You can also open a Microsoft Office document within the corresponding Google Office app by pressing Ctrl-O while in Chrome and selecting the document on your computer.
It’s true that for the past few years, Docs, Sheets, and Slides have been able to natively edit Office-formatted files, but only if you upload them to Google Drive first. This extension allows you to open an Office format file on your computer directly from Chrome.
Note: On Chrome OS, this extension is installed by default.
8. Save emails to Google Drive
The CloudHQ extension works with your Gmail and Google Drive accounts together. Convert an email in your Gmail account to PDF format and store it in your Google Drive. This can be useful if you have business or legal correspondence that needs to be archived as PDF files for easy printing or sharing with others.
To do this, open an email message in Gmail. Click the “Save to” button in the toolbar above your email and choose “Save to Google Drive” from the drop-down panel. You will be shown a window that lists the folders in your Google Drive; select the one where you want to save the PDF of the message, along with any attachments.
This extension also works from the home screen of your Gmail user account. Select one or more emails from here and click the “Download as PDF” icon in the toolbar above the email subject headings. A dropdown panel will allow you to save all the emails you selected as separate PDF files, merge them into a single PDF, or save only the files attached to these emails. The PDF files created and the attachments in these emails will be saved to a folder of your choice in Google Drive.
CloudHQ uses its own server to perform this trick. (See the policies of and the company). You can convert and save up to 50 of your Gmail messages per month for free. You will need to pay for a Premium plan to convert and save an unlimited number of emails.
9. Save to Google Drive
Here’s another useful Chrome extension from the developers of Google Drive. With , you can store items you find on your web browsing, such as documents, images, and media, directly in Google Drive without having to download them first. For example, if you want to save an image you see in your browser window, right-click and then click Save image to Google Drive in the panel that opens.
Save to Google Drive also adds its icon to the Chrome toolbar; when clicked, it will capture the screen of the web page in the currently active browser tab and upload this image to your Google Drive. It can be configured to do this in one of five ways: as a screenshot of the entire layout of the page, as a screenshot of the section of the page that is visible in the browser window, as the HTML source file of the page, as an MHT web archive file, or as a document that you can edit in Google Docs.
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