By default, Google creates new office files of any sort inside your main Google Drive folder. If you want to make a new doc or other file in a specific spot, you’ve got to visit that folder in the browser, then create a new document there. I prefer to drag and drop files later and not have the creative process disrupted by organizational needs. Click, go! Then make it tidy. Also, a spreadsheet or document makes it harder to scan the long list of folders in my main Google Drive.
Below is a guide that shows you how to use a URL to create a new Google Doc in your preferred folder. One caveat is that if you set Chrome to automatically open default pages, it will interfere with the Automator shortcut for Macs. Use the “Open a new tab page” setting upon startup in your Chrome preferences.
Anyway, this how-to features a simple organizational principle, the critical URL trick, and a cursory look at the Automator app on Macs. It builds upon a Stack Exchange post from jaycer. [Here’s another trick about embedding specific columns and rows of a Google spreadsheet into a site.]
1: Create a folder called “1-inbox” in your main Google Drive folder. I use the number to push the folder to the top of my list; an asterisk or underscore could work, too. Your new documents will start in “1-inbox.” (This an “email inbox” organizational concept that many info-tidiness freaks like myself enjoy. You eventually move documents from here into the appropriate places.)
2: Visit your “1-inbox” folder in your browser and gets its ID. It’s the long string at the end of the folder’s URL. It will look something like this (details obscured): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B-LOTS-MORE-LETTERS-NUMBERS-OF-FOLDER-ID
3: Create a document, spreadsheet, form, slides presentation, or just about any type of Google office file in your 1-inbox folder by:
- Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/create?usp=drive_web&folder=0B-LOTS-MORE-LETTERS-NUMBERS-OF-FOLDER-ID
- Google Sheet: http://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/create?usp=drive_web&folder=0B-LOTS-MORE-LETTERS-NUMBERS-OF-FOLDER-ID
- Google Slides Presentation: http://docs.google.com/presentation/create?usp=drive_web&folder=0B-LOTS-MORE-LETTERS-NUMBERS-OF-FOLDER-ID
- Google Form: https://docs.google.com/forms/create?usp=drive_web&folder=0B-LOTS-MORE-LETTERS-NUMBERS-OF-FOLDER-ID
- You can see that the only part of the URL that is changing is the part that refers to what type of file you’re making — you swap “document” for “spreadsheets” if you want to make a nice big text document to write in.
4: To speed up this action, you could make bookmarks out of the links above. Or, if you have a Mac, you could use Automator to make an app that opens a specific URL. A brief journey through Automator:
- Open Automator. Choose File > New > Application
- In the Library of Actions, look for “Get Specified URLs”
- Double click on the action to add it to the process flow
- Set the URL of the “Get Specific URLs” action to whatever Google file type you want.
- In the Library of Actions, look for “Display Webpages”
- Double click on the action to add it to the process flow
- Save your app.
- Put the app in your Mac dock
- If you want to change the app’s icon, right click on it, choose “Get Info” to open a Finder window about it. Find an image online you want for the icon. Copy that image. Go back to the app’s Finder window. Click once on the icon to the left of app’s name. This will highlight it. Then paste the image you copied from the web. The icon should change. Zazing! You’ve got a one-click, tidy method in your dock to make a new Google doc.
A fun extra:
Mark left a comment identifying official Google shortcut URLs to instantly create docs, sheets, slides, and forms. However, you cannot use these short URLs to create the files in specific folders — they will only create the file in your base Google Drive folder, since you cannot append any folder ID numbers to them, as I do above. You can read about the shortcut URLs on Google’s support pages, and here they are for your convenience: docs.new, sheets.new, slides.new, and forms.new.