Written by Ivana Google Workplace / Docs
Google’s text editor tool Google Docs has changed how we work with our colleagues, making and suggesting edits to a text document in real-time.
Google Docs offers great efficiency and flexibility with collaboration. Everyone who is given access to a document can see the changes and comments done to it, and access version history to see the latest changes highlighted at their convenience.
When you share a Google Docs, you can choose the level of access people have - if they can edit a document, only view it or leave comments on it without being able to edit the text.
However, until just recently, you could only see who edited your Google Docs, but not just who read it. If a person didn’t make any edit, leave a comment or save the document, you had no idea if that person opened and read the latest version of a document.
And often we want to share a document with people with the intention that they only read the document without allowing them to make changes to it.
Google recently launched a new feature to Google Docs that allows people to check who read a document. You just need to configure this feature in your Google Docs and you’ll be able to see who viewed your document.
In this post, we’ll explain how you can see who accessed and read your Google Docs file.
Usually, G-Suite is used by organizations that require collaboration in the workplace. If you use G Suite to collaborate with your coworkers, you can use the activity monitor to track who viewed a Google Doc file.
Note that to get access to the information about who viewed your Google Docs, you need to have G-Suite, which is a paid version.
When you have your G-Suite, follow the steps below to see who viewed your doc:
Apart from seeing who viewed your Google Doc and when they viewed it, you can also see trends on when people viewed or commented on your document with the Activity Monitor.
In case you want to turn off view history in Google Docs, you can do it with these easy steps:
Apart from turning off view history in Google Docs with the paid G-Suite version, you can turn off your view history in the personal or free version of Google Docs.
To do this:
If you want to learn another helpful feature in Google Docs, check out how to use the real-time chat feature in Google Docs that allows users to chat within the document.
Also, if you’re using Google Photos regularly, we’re sure you wondered at some point if you can create a safe space for your photos. Learn how you can lock your Google Photos Gallery.