Color Code and Organize Your Google Drive
It seems like I rely more and more on my Google Drive each year of my teaching. I upload my favorite resources to folders, create docs for my students to use in Google Classroom, store maps for Social Studies, upload photos of our Science experiments…there is just so much you can do with the drive. And I really love how easy it is to organize your files.
But, truth be told, I was never a big fan of the layout and colors.
A sea of gray folders is never really helpful when you are a busy teacher trying to find docs on the fly. And, while you can colorize the folders, there is only so much control over the order they can be displayed.
Or is there?
I’ve had my folders colorized for a few years, but I learned something new. It actually turns out you can number your folders to keep them in the order you would like them to appear (this is a little tip I learned from my sister over at Fashion Craze Learning Days). After doing a little research, I learned you can also include some fun numbers, to make those folders really stand out:
And it gets better.
You can even include some basic symbols to organize those folders even further:
Would you like to try? It’s very easy to do…simply follow the steps below:
1. First you will need to open a tab for this fantastic site: Copy Paste Character. There is a drop down menu at the top. We’ll be using the numbers first, so select Numerals from the list.
2. Open another tab to access your Google Drive. You can either make adjustments to the folders you already have, or start from scratch. If you are creating a new folder, right-click and choose New Folder and name it:
3. Your new folder will show as the default gray color. There are two ways to change the color. You can right-click for a popup menu, or double click the folder and choose from the drop down menu. Select Change Color:
4. Once you have chosen the colors for your folders, choose the order in which you would like them to be displayed. This is where the numbers will come into play. Since the default sorts are alphabetical (ascending and descending) or last modified or opened, the numbers give you a bit more control over your display.
Navigate to the Copy Paste Character site and choose the number style you would like (I went with the larger numbers in black):
Clicking on the number should automatically copy it to your clipboard. Head back to your Google folder. Right-click or use the drop down menu to choose Rename:
Go to the beginning of your folder name and paste the number:
Continue until you have numbered all of your folders. Please note: this will only work for numbers up to 9…once you choose 10 and above it will start to display out of order, 1, then 10, then 2, etc. I like to use subfolders, so I kept my major subjects to nine folders:
You can display these as thumbnails (shown above) or as a list:
5. Now to add subfolders and symbols! For my subfolders, I kept the same color as the subject and chose some basic icons to go with units/topics. We have three major writing units (Opinion, Narrative, and Informational) and I started setting up folders for other resources:
In my Math folder, I created subfolders for our Math Rotation materials, as well as numbered folders for our math units (I used the smaller black numbers for these units, so they would stand out from the large numbers used in the subject area folders):
To do this, click on a subject area folder you have created. Right-click or choose the red New button to set up a new folder. Follow the same steps as we did for the numbers, but this time choosing symbols to match your folders from the Copy Paste Character website:
And that’s it! There is a nice selection of symbols from the website to choose from…though you may have to get creative with some of your folder symbols (I so desperately wanted a book symbol, but could not find one!). There is a chance other symbol sites may work as well, but many times the symbols do not show up in different browsers. I did a lot of testing and found these symbols to work best for my folders.
I hope this is of some help to those of you looking to color code and organize your Google Drive!
Would you like to try some more colorful organization for your Google Drive? Keeping a grade book in Google Sheets has made record keeping MUCH easier for me this school year. With color-coded tabs and icons, I can quickly find the exact grading page I need. And the best part? These templates automatically average grades as they are entered…it’s been such a time-saver! Please click the image below to learn more:
Kristen Beakey
I’m an elementary math coach with a passion for sharing beautiful, streamlined solutions to save teachers time. Ladybug’s Teacher Files has been a work of love since 2010. Filled with organization, time-saving ideas, and make and take tech tutorials…I strive to save you time in all aspects of your teaching!
Hi Lori! Thanks so much for sharing all of this and for reading!! I didn’t know about Emojipedia back in the day when I first wrote this post. And I do agree with you, I find emojis cluttery-looking at times!!
Thanks again for all you shared!
Happy Summer!
Kristen
I found this very helpful. I was really looking for how to organize sub-folders and your article indirectly addressed that and gave me other great ideas.
1) I had numbered my main folders just by typing numbers, but now I’m going to try your excellent visually appealing number idea.
2) I’ve tried symbols on my main folder names but it looks cluttery to me when my main folders are also already color-coded. But I love the idea of the symbols at the subfolder level.
3) Your subfolders are all the same color as the main folder they fall under but are differentiated by a symbol. Yes!
4) I saw another video with the symbol idea (but not at the subfolder level!) and they suggested emojipedia. I don’t know if you tried that for that book symbol you so wanted. Just a thought.
Thanks so much. You had the best ideas I found for organizing down to the subfolder level. Thanks!
Hi Lori! Thanks so much for sharing all of this and for reading!! I didn’t know about Emojipedia back in the day when I first wrote this post. And I do agree with you, I find emojis cluttery-looking at times!!
Thanks again for all you shared!
Happy Summer!