Rest assured that your documents, spreadsheets, and presentations will remain private unless you publish them to the Web or invite collaborators or viewers. Once you're signed in, you can grant access to whomever you'd like. Until then, your documents, spreadsheets, and presentations are private.
Because robots and spiders can't get to your documents, spreadsheets or presentations, your docs won't appear in any search index.
You can share your documents, spreadsheets or presentations with others. Here's how:
Sharing with a select audience
Invite others by entering their email addresses. Click the Share drop-down menu and select Invite people… Select To edit or To view, depending on your preference. Here, you can add individual email addresses. Click the Advanced permissions tab, and deselect the options 'Allow editors to invite others to edit or view' and 'Allow invitations to be forwarded.'
If you'd like to share your doc with a mailing lists, you'll need to select 'Allow invitations to be forwarded.' Keep in mind that if this option is selected, the members of the group will be able to forward invitations to others. Read more information on sharing your docs with mailing lists.
Limiting access to your docs
To limit access to your documents, spreadsheets, or presentations, please follow these steps:
- From your doc, click Share and select Invite people...
- Click the Advanced permissions tab.
- Deselect the option labeled 'Allow editors to invite others to edit or view.'
- When the first option is selected, anyone who receives an invitation can grant access to others.
- Deselecting this first option prevents collaborators from granting this access and revokes any invitation they may have sent while the option was selected. However, you'll still need to manually remove any new viewers or collaborators who accessed the spreadsheet while the option was selected.
- Once you've deselected this option, collaborators won't be able to invite anyone else to the doc.
Important note: If you have any of these options selected: 'Allow editors to invite others to edit or view' or 'Allow invitations to be forwarded,' collaborators you've removed from your doc can use the link in the original email invite to regain access to the document, presentation, or spreadsheet. Deselect these options to prevent people who originally received an invitation from regaining access by using that same invitation link. You'll still need to manually remove any new viewers or collaborators who accessed the doc while the option was selected.
Revision history
If you don't want collaborators or viewers to have access to the revision history (including images and drawings) of your documents, presentations, or spreadsheets, you can make a copy of the doc and then share that version. Once you make a copy of the document, the revision history is removed from that copy.
Sharing a document, spreadsheet or presentation with the world
Publish any doc to the Web by clicking the Share drop-down menu and selecting Publish as a web page (or Publish / embed for presentations). You'll get a URL that allows anyone, with or without a Google Account, to access and view your published doc.