Sign in to Google
One click, once. Your browser opens, you approve, and DriveSync stays signed in from then on.
This copy of DriveSync has no server configured, so Google sign-in is unavailable. Files from this computer still work. Contact your supplier.
From Google Drive
Choose Docs and Sheets through Google's own picker. DriveSync only ever gets access to the files you pick.
From this computer
Word and Excel files on this machine — including anything in a OneDrive, SharePoint or Dropbox folder. No sign-in needed.
Activity
To put a file into a frame: click the frame in InDesign, then press Place here. DriveSync labels that frame, links the file to it and syncs, in one step.
Each file flows into the frame whose script label matches. Labels and the connected file list both live inside the .indd, so a template can be labelled once and reused forever — and a colleague who opens the same document sees the same connections. Save the document to keep them.
Label the selected frame
Select one text frame in InDesign, then give it the label a connected file should flow into.
Labels in this document
Export to a Google Doc
Send a labelled frame's text out to a brand-new Google Doc. The words only — your layout stays here.
Sheets labels
my-article | the Doc flows into this frame |
Price | Sheets: column Price, row 1 |
row-3-Price | Sheets: column Price, row 3 |
Sync behaviour
The cursor route goes through InDesign's own Place dialog, because that is the only thing that loads a real cursor — so you pick the file there, then drag. DriveSync labels and syncs whatever you draw.
Fingerprints every paragraph's style, font, size, leading, alignment, spacing and indents before and after a sync, and reports anything that moved. This is DriveSync checking its own promise — leave it on.
Marks edited files changed in Google in the Connected tab. It never syncs on its own — nothing reaches your layout until you press Sync, so a writer cannot reflow a spread you are working on.
Switch on "Show connected Docs in the Links panel" below and the same change also appears as InDesign's yellow modified triangle. Each tick costs one small Drive request per connected file, so a faster setting is fine for a few documents and worth easing off if you keep many open all day.
Auto-sync — this one DOES change your layout
Unlike watching, this pulls content in on its own. With several writers in a shared Doc that can reflow a spread while you are working on it. Leave it on never unless you want that.
Files on disk
Costs you a layer. A script can only create a
Links entry by placing a file, so DriveSync parks a 12pt copy of each Doc on a hidden,
locked, non-printing DriveSync Links layer. Switch this off and the layer
and its frames are deleted outright.
The Links row points at that local file, not at Google: Update Link there re-reads the file, it does not fetch from Google — only a DriveSync sync does that. Those files are collected when you package the document.
Downloaded images and the generated XML live in a
DriveSync Links folder here.
Presets
Presets are stored on this computer, for this user. Export one to a file on a shared drive and the rest of the team can import it, so everyone syncs with the same style mapping.
Account
Scope: drive.file only — DriveSync can never see a
file you have not explicitly picked.
Licence
Deactivating frees this computer's seat so the licence can be used on a different machine. DriveSync will ask for the licence again next time it opens.