If you haven’t noticed yet, Gmail has a new email composer; the user interface is much like G Talk’s pop-out chat window (from within Gmail). The new email composer lays over your Inbox or over any open message. This makes it easy to reference an email message while composing a new email.
Along with this new email composer also comes some great new features, one of which allows you to attach documents from Google Drive to your messages.
It’s a really useful feature because no longer do you have to go to Google Drive to share a file or document. Now, you can do this right from Gmail.
Sharing via Google Drive
Here’s how to add files from Google Drive to an email message in Gmail.
1. Go to your Gmail or Google Apps email account.
2. Click on the “compose” button to start a new email message.
3. In the email composer, hover your mouse over the paperclip – at the bottom of and to the right of the Send button.
4. When you hover your mouse over the paperclip, the following file attachment options will appear:
- Insert files using Drive
- Insert photos
- Insert link
- Insert emoticon (coming soon)
- Insert invitation (using Google Calendar)
5. We’re going to focus on the “Insert files using Drive” option; click on the Google Drive icon to bring up the “Insert files using Google Drive” window.
6. From the “My Drive” tab, you can select the file(s) that you want to add to your email message and then click the “Insert” button.
7. You may also want to use the other sections like “Shared with me” and “Starred” to quickly find important items and those that have been shared with you.
8. Clicking on the “Upload” tab will let you select files from your computer and add it right to your Google Drive from Gmail.
This is a really convenient feature to have – especially since you can upload files up to 10 GB to your Google Drive.
9. Once you attach your file(s) or document(s) you’ll see it right inside your email message.
Wherever your mouse cursor is when you insert it, that’s where the item will appear.
10. Once you send the message, your recipient will be able to see a preview of the file or document right within the message. They can also open it up in a new tab.
That’s all there is to it. As you can see, it’s really a piece of cake and more convenient than having to navigate to Google Drive.
