Why do converted files get saved in my root folder?
Q Our company uses Google’s G Suite, so I work in Google Docs and Sheets, and organise my files with Drive. I’m well used to the system, which lets us collaborate with colleagues and clients, but we haven’t convinced everyone. Several clients still want us to submit work in Office file formats like DOCX and PPTX, and that’s how they send us revisions and source material.
We have to convert their Office files to Google’s own formats to enable all the editing features and show comments. Sometimes the converted file is saved to the same folder as the source document, which is typically what we want. At other times, however, it appears in the root of my Drive folder and I need to move it back to where it should be.
Am I missing something?
A We’ve experienced the same unpredictable behaviour and we’re not sure what causes it.
We’ve heard it suggested that it’s linked either to how long the source file has been stored in its Drive folder, or how long it’s been open in the Office-editing tool before being exported, but we can’t find a correlation.
There’s a way around it, though. Open Google Drive in a web browser, click the top-right cog icon, select Settings, tick ‘Convert uploaded files to Google Docs editor format’ (see screenshot above), then click Done. Now, when you upload or drag and drop relevant files to a folder in Google Drive, they’ll automatically be converted and stored in the same folder.
There are a couple of potential snags. Firstly, the conversion only happens for files that are uploaded from the Drive interface. No conversion takes place if you add a file to your drive and, for instance, it’s shared with you or sent as an email attachment. Nor is there a conversion if you save a file locally to your Drive folder and have ‘Google Backup and Sync’ synchronise it online.
The second potential drawback is that the original file isn’t stored, and it isn’t available in the bin. If it’s important to keep an unaltered record of the customer’s original input or feedback, you might want to save it first using one of the methods above, then upload it to Drive to create the converted version in the same folder.