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Updating the same file in multiple folders in google drive


I am a guitar teacher and use google drive for all my lesson material. Each student/ Class has their own folder and the same document may appear in a number of individual folders, especially the beginning material.

When I update lesson material, I currently have to search and replace every single instance of the document in the google drive, which is very time consuming. I have set up an update folder which triggers a zap when I put the new document in, but cannot work out how to find every instance of the old version in the google drive and update it.

There does seem to be potential solutions, but I would have to write the zap to check each folder individually which means updating the zap every time a student changes. I am hoping that there is a simpler way that I cannot find

Is this possible?

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Best answer by Troy Tessalone 27 May 2022, 21:22

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Userlevel 7
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Hey there, @RockinRon! I wanted to check and see if Troy’s recommendations helped or if you’re still needing some assistance with this? Keep us posted! 🤗

@Troy Tessalone @christina.d Thank you for update and interest.

I’ve gone with the shortcuts method, after a few trials and getting to grips with the concept and how it will work for my situation, it definitely seems the best way to go for the future.

Doing it this way resolves a couple of other issues as well and may promote a sense of competition between my students as they will see how well they are all progressing. A lot of work to get everything swapped across but certainly sets me up well for growth and a significant reduction of man hours for future document updates

 

Userlevel 7
Badge +14

Hi @RockinRon 

Good question.

You may be better served by using a file Shortcut in GDrive.

GDrive help article about Shortcuts: https://support.google.com/drive/answer/9700156?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop

 

Thank you for that, I will investigate further and have a go.

I also found that you could have the same file in multiple folders as another solution when investigating further this morning.

Investigation I am working on to progress at the moment is a lot of the feedback and lesson material is done using the comments function, works well as we can discuss specific items of issue between lessons without confusion, but may confuse students from a different lesson if the comments are shared with all.

I think this may take a while to apply best solution.

Userlevel 7
Badge +14

@RockinRon 

You’ll likely have to keep a lookup table of Folders to loop thru each time.

Check out this related topic: