Get Notified of Changes by Google Docs

One thing I love with Google Docs is that it lets multiply users share and collaborate documents and spreadsheets. This way you can just maintain one single copy of a file, and several people can contribute creating and editing.

What’s even better is that Google helps you in keepng track of changes even without having to login. You can have Google email you updates either the moment changes are saved, or a summary at regular intervals.

To do this, you first click on the share link to enter the sharing interface.

Then you look for the “Notify me at (email address here” checkbox. That means Google Docs will send you notifications when changes are done to the document or spreadsheet.

You can select the frequency of notification. I usually prefer a daily summary (so my inbox doesn’t get flooded). But you can have Google notify you everytime a change is done.

You can actually even select what Google would notify you for. For this, select “According to advanced rules …” from the dropdown box.

You can choose to be notified of any changes, or any changes on a specific document or sheet, or even if any specific spreadsheet cell is changed. You can also choose whether to be notified right away, or whether Google should just send updates on a specified time.

This is actually a very flexible system. We can discuss how to play with the notification rules next.