Both documents created by Google office applications and Microsoft Office formatted documents stored in a Google Drive account will open in a new tab when they are selected.
The File menu in a document that is open in any of Google’s office applications has an Open item. Clicking it launches a dialog with different documents and different categories.
This Web page will cover both ways of opening these documents.
Google Drive
The document manager for Google’s office suite lists documents and folders in several different main categories that are in the left column: My Drive, Shared with me, Recent, and Starred. My Drive is the main interface where all the documents a user has uploaded, created, and shared with other users has been stored.
Recent is a list of the latest documents to be created and edited. Starred is a list of documents the user has selected as his favorites. Shared with me only contains documents others have sent to her, so she could collaborate on.
There are several ways to open a Google and Microsoft formatted documents stored in Drive. There is an additional step for opening documents in OpenDocument Foormats and other formats.
- Double-click the desired document
- Click the desired document. Then click the three dots at the top of the list of documents. Highlight the Open with sub-menu. Then click the Google application that is in the list.
- Click the desired document. Then right-click on the document. Highlight the Open with sub-menu. Then click the Google application that is in the list.
Double-clicking
This will open any document in a Microsoft format or Google format in a new tab in the browser. For other formats, see below.
Top menu
Click the desired document once, and a row of menu items will appear above the list of documents.
- Click the three dot item that is to the right of the trashcan icon.
- Highlight the Open with submenu in the menu that appears.
- Click the Google application that appears in the submenu.
The document launches in a new tab in the Web browser.
Right-click menu
Move the cursor to the desired document, and then click the right button on the mouse or trackpad. The menu that appears is similar to the one that appears when the three dots are clicked.
- In the menu, highlight the Open with submenu in the menu that appears.
- Click the Google application that appears in the submenu.
The document launches in a new tab in the Web browser.
Open from document
The File menu in Docs, Sheets, and Slides launches a dialog that shows Folders and Files that are in the Google Drive account. The Open a file dialog has the categories that are in Google Drive: My Drive, Shared with Me, Starred, and Recent. There also is a tab to upload documents.
There also is a search field. Type a desired term in the field and a list appears with documents that match. There are filters that can be applied.
- Click the arrow at the right of the field.
- Click the desired filter.
- After entering the desired terms and applying filters, either press return or enter on your keyboard or click the eyeglass icon that is to the right of the field. It will search document names and the contents of documents.
Double-click the desired document. Users also can click it, then click the Open button. The document will be launched in a new tab.