Google Docs to Support Comment-Only Sharing

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Cloud computing is on the rise, as evidence with how much effort Google has put into its Chromebooks. A benefit of online documents is that users can collaborate. A recent update to Google Docs will let users share documents for comment only.

Google Docs is a great tool for collaborating on documents, spreadsheets and presentations. With the service, multiple users can work on a single document all at the same time, and changes are made in real-time. But it’s not always that you want to give other users editing access to your documents. Before, users can share documents as read-only, but that’s as far as collaboration goes — there was no feedback mechanism aside from email.

With a recent Google Docs update, you can now share read-only docs, but allow users to discuss the item through comments. With this feature, you can gather feedback or encourage discussion on a document, but without enabling editing access to your correspondents. The feature can work within the set of defined users, or you can even share the document for public access with a URL.

To give specific users access to your document, simply click the share button and add contacts. You’ll have to define “Can comment” among the access privilege options, instead of “can edit” or “can view.” To allow the public to access your doc, simply change the sharing settings to either “Public on the web” or “Anyone with the link,” and set the editing privileges to “Can comment.”

Google has recently enabled major changes to services like Docs and Gmail, particularly offline access. We suppose these changes will enable better productivity to users who don’t always have Internet connections, particularly those using Chromebooks. This new update is not as big, but will be useful among organizations that frequently need to collaborate and discuss documents.