CreativePro Forum

Return to Member Forum

• Author
  Posts
• • April 6, 2015 at 11:29 am #74418
    Josephine Woertman

    Member

    Is anyone using google drive to share/collaborate with indesign files? Currently all our indesign files reside on a server and we work directly off of the server. There is a company plan to get rid of the servers and replace them with the Google drive.

  • April 7, 2015 at 3:00 am #74423
    Artwork Abode

    Member

    Hi,

    Google Drive is a file storage and synchronization service.It allows users to store documents in the cloud, share files, and edit documents with collaborators.Yes it is very familiar for sharing Adobe InDesign files but you need a good organisation. If your company is bigger one you need to make great file network (lot of folders) in order to better manage files.Many companies are using this sharing service and many of them are taking great success.

    Regards!

  • April 7, 2015 at 2:07 pm #74440
    Josephine Woertman

    Member

    Hi Artwork Abode,
    Many thanks for your response. I have a few more questions.
    Folder organization aside, are you editing/designing in the indesign document from within the google drive on the web browser? What are you doing about linked images, are they residing on the google drive as well along side the indesign document?

    • April 7, 2015 at 2:41 pm #74442
      Dwayne Harris

      Member

      The last I knew, you can’t edit or work non–Google Drive documents via browser.

      I’m thinking you’d have to download to your computer, work on it, then place back on Google Drive when done. In any event, I’ve always found it dangerous to work on a live document on the server or remotely. I think it’s best to work on your local machine and then back it up to the server/remote site when you are done.

      I know your questions about the art were directed to Artwork Abode, but I would think the best way to do your art is an art folder for each job. For example, in my work flow, I have a main folder for each specific job. In that folder is my pages folder, fonts folder, art folder, etc.

      Note: Personally, if my company ever thought of using Google Drive instead of our server, I’d be the first to object. I wouldn’t trust anything in the cloud with our livelihood. If Google has an outage for a day or two (or even hours), we’d be screwed.

      Thankfully–we have a server, and if that ever craps the bed, we have twice-daily back-ups to external drives, as well as archives going back several years.

      I’m curious as to why your company has such faith in getting rid of their servers and using Google Drive.

  • April 8, 2015 at 2:11 am #74444
    Artwork Abode

    Member

    Dear Josephine,

    Just think about Google Drive as another PC.I mean, Google Drive is very simple.Just your another hard drive on the internet.You must upload files, and when you want to reedit some file you must upload it again.Dwayne’s personal oppinion is not so good, you don’t want to trust largest internet company in the world?Google have a couple of servers in whole world.They are never down, that is not possibile.
    If you have more questions please ask me?

    Regards,
    Artwork Abode

    • April 8, 2015 at 4:05 am #74446
      Dwayne Harris

      Member

      If you want to trust it, Artwork Abode, be my guest. I see nothing wrong using something like that to transfer files back and forth, but I would not be comfortable with it being my main server.
      And it’s always possible for it to go down. Maybe not for a long period of time, but it’s possible. And there have been several GMail outages in the past.
      But then again, it’s just my personal opinion.

  • April 9, 2015 at 7:35 am #74497
    Kenneth Darby

    Member

    I work for a commercial printer. Our company SOP is to work on the files from the network server location. All workstations have UPS battery backups, as well as, all the servers and network switches. In the event of a catastrophic loss of power we have more than enough time to safely save and shutdown. Twenty years ago I was the only prepress operator but now we have ten across all shifts.

    One thing to be said for Google Drive is that the servers are replicated in multiple locations and I don’t think your files would be lost even if a location went down. I would be more concerned about several people downloading the same file and working on it and that the last one to upload may not have changes made by someone else. On our system if one is working on a file a lock file is created preventing someone else working on it until the file is closed.

  • November 1, 2015 at 4:37 pm #79139
    Warren Bingham

    Participant

    I have hit a snag with Google Drive and InDesign. I can create and save a file, but when I try to save the changes made in the file, it tells me it cannot write to the file because it is in use. In the end, I just save it with a number appended to the file name. It is not my favorite, but I’m guessing that it is something to do with InDesign wanting exclusive access and Google Drive trying to replicate the file everywhere.

  • November 3, 2015 at 10:30 am #79189
    Anne-Marie Concepcion

    Member

    Interesting. I did a test a while ago with a colleague to see if we could share a Google Drive folder and put an InDesign file and InCopy files in there, and it worked great.

    It does require that both (all) users install the Google Drive *app* on their desktop computers. If you go to your Google Drive home screen, at the bottom left you’ll see link to download the app. Once installed, it creates a folder on your hard drive called Google Drive. It’s at the top level of your user account’s collection of folders. (IOW, same level as Documents or Desktop, on a Mac.)

    Then it works kinda like Dropbox. The files on your Google Drive are synced to your hard drive. (This may be an optional setting, don’t remember. But mine are.)

    You can save a folder w/an InDesign file into your local Google Drive folder, then right-click and Share it with other Google Drive users. They will need to sync it to their Google Drive as well, and they edit it on their local computer, in the Google Drive folder. There is no manual uploading or downloading involved.

    AM

  • November 3, 2015 at 10:37 am #79190
    Stephen Piddington

    Member

    I use DropBox and have a similar problem to Warren: sometimes I try to save a file and get told it is in use. This is the problem with anything that syncs – it’s easy to conflict with the syncing activity.

• Author
  Posts