Google Sites: Embedding Google Docs

Google Sites Embedding Drive Documents

Alex Reyes

Dijital Maestro

L ESSON 1

Embed Google Docs Google Sites and Google Drive work together to help develop rich content for your site. One of the features is the ability to embed a Google Drive document into a web page. There are several benefits to this feature.

One benefit is that you can use the familiar word processing, spreadsheet or presentation tools to create content. Another benefit is that you can easily update the document with any changes needed. Those changes are automatically updated on your web page. Finally, embedding a Google Drive document into your page is easy because the tools are readily available in your site. You don't have to use any web code to place it on a page or to get it to work.

For this lesson I'll place a class schedule on it's own page.

Click the add page button.

1

Provide a short descriptive name for the page.

Click the create button.

2

When the page opens for editing, make sure the cursor is in the page body section.

Go to the menu and click the insert option.

3

There are a lot of options for inserting items but the one we need is listed on the far right. Move your mouse over Drive.

Select the Document option.

A select module will open. This module will display all the Google Drive compatible documents in your Drive. You cannot embed Word, Excel or PowerPoint documents until they have been converted to the Google Drive compatible format.

4

Click to select the document and click the select button.

An options box will open for the selected document. You can leave the options as they are and click the save button. In my example, I'm going to remove the border from the document.

5

To remove the border, I'll remove the check mark from the border option. I'll leave the other options as they are and click Save.

A place holder for the document will appear in the page body.

The place holder includes the name of the document.

6

Click the save button to get a preview of the document on the page.

The document should appear on the page.

7

One thing about embedding documents on a page is that documents are made for the print world and not for the online world.

Documents are tall at 8.5 inches wide and 11 inches tall. If there is more information on your document, visitors will have to use the scroll bar to see the rest of the document.

To see how it looks to the world, click the more actions button and select Preview page as viewer.

I recommend you always do this step when creating or updating any content on your site.

I don't like to scroll, you don't like to scroll and neither do visitors to your site. If you can't see all the document information without scrolling, you should adjust the document settings.

8

The page should look fine without the need to scroll for more information.

If you need to scroll to see the rest of the document information, return to the document in edit mode and click on the edit page button.

9

Above the embedded page you will see a small toolbar. Click on the more actions button.

In the document properties module we'll adjust the document view height. The current height is 600 pixels.

10

I'll change the height to 800 pixels and click the save button.

Click the page save button.

Preview the page and the document.

Your visitors might still need to scroll to see the complete page, but they won't have to contend with the double scroll option for the page and for the document.

11

The embed document toolbar provides options to flush left, flush right or center a document on the page. To remove the embedded document, click the 'X'.

There are options to wrap text around the document. I don't recommend you combine page text and a document on the same page. It could be confusing to your audience.

12

Copyright

ŠCopyright 2014 by Alex Reyes Cover design by Alex Reyes This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of

this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/.

Every effort has been

made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is provided without warranty, either expressed or implied. Neither the author, nor any distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.The author has endeavored to provide trademark information about all the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, the author cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

Š 2014 xiii