Why do my documents lose their nice layout in Google Drive?

If you are new to Google Drive you can start by reading “What is Google Drive” to get a general idea of how it works. The thing with Google Drive is that it’s always your workspace and you can change the settings in many ways so that it fits you perfectly.

The default setting in Google Drive is that all the files that you upload will keep the settings they had when they were uploaded. That means that Word-files will remain Word-files and Google Document might find them a little bit difficult to read. That is why they look strange when you try to open them.

One may ask why this feature is not turned on automatically, but it is really not that strange when you think about it. Google Drive is a warehouse to store your files. This means that Google’s main rule is to protect all your files as good as it possibly can and make sure that not a single zero is bent on their heads.

Therefore, when you upload Word documents, Google Drive will preserve them as Word documents and Google is really good at it, but the problem comes when you click on them and Google Docs will try to open them. They are written in Word-ish and Google Docs is not that good at reading it. A code that means “place the picture in the right corner” in Word-ish might mean something completely different in Google-ish and that is why things sometimes look completely different.

By checking a certain box in the settings, you’ll give Google Drive permission to “destroy” the files you upload and they will convert from Word to Google Docs. When you give Google that permission, it will always rewrite all the files you upload and they will keep their nice design!