How to see who has viewed a Google Doc in Google Drive

Google Drive plays a vital role in the collaboration. It has enormous features such as the ability to allow multiple people to make edits on the same document in real-time, that too without losing any of your important data.

If you’re using office resources online through the Google Drive application, then you can easily identify who accessed your files. Furthermore, you may always be alerted when you know who made what changes to your important documents.

Before the Google Drive update, if a person makes changes to the document, you may never know who has read or seen your document.

Moreover, the tool also allows you to share your documents with only reading or commenting authority. This helps prevent other people who access your document from making changes to it. let’s go deep and learn at how to see who has viewed a Google Doc in Google Drive.

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Table of Contents

See Who Has Viewed a Google Doc- G-Suite Activity Monitor Feature

Organizations that require cooperating as an essential part of their work culture use G-Suite to make their processes faster and more convenient. It includes an activity monitor feature that allows you to see the view history of your Google Doc anytime. Follow this below points to do so.

Points to be noted – For the personal account, you cannot see the options Actvity dashboard or arrow icon in the Google docs page. Only enterprise edition can have the option to view this and proceed.

As a first and foremost step, you need to open your Google Doc in a browser tab.
Navigate to docs.google.com and either search for it or locate it manually.
Once you’ve located the document, you need to make right-click. Now, choose the option Open in a New Tab to proceed or directly you can proceed with the next steps.
After accessing the document, click on an arrow icon facing upwards at the top-right corner of your screen.

Alternatively, you can also navigate to the Tools menu item to see who has viewed Google Docs.

Now, click on the Activity dashboard option that details all the people who have accessed your document recently. All you need to do is click the option Viewers to be able to check the details.

see the view history of Google Docs — How to see who has Viewed a Google Doc

With the above mentioned steps on how to see who has viewed a Google Doc, you can easily track viewers of your Google Doc. It also allows you to see the date and time of who has accessed the Google docs.

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Check Comments and Viewer Details in Google Docs

By seeing who has viewed your Google Doc, there is one more option like you can also gain details over the time and date when people commented or viewed your document. Here’s a brief detail about both the features:

Viewer Details – The viewer details are available in the form of a bar chart. It includes all the unique views received by your document in seven days.
Comment Details – You can check the date and time of unique comments. It appears on your document for seven days in the form of bar charts.

These perfect details not only allow you to work quicker by knowing the document status in real-time. But it also let us know that any important information has been read by your team.

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Turn-Off View History on Google Docs

Follow the below steps, if you would like to turn off the view history of your Google Doc for any reason. It will help in turning off the activity monitoring feature in the enterprise version of Google Docs.

If you already have your desired Google Doc opened in your browser, you can move directly to the second step. However, if it is not opened then type Google Docs from the browser.
Once the document is opened, click on the upward-facing arrow located at the top-right corner of your screen to access the Activity Dashboard option. This option can also accessed through the Tools menu.
Now when you’ve successfully opened the activity monitor interface, move to Privacy Settings options.

Simply enable the slider available next to the option named Show my view history for this document to the left side, such that it turns grey in color.

This is a very useful tool. Especially when you’re working on a draft and don’t want to share it with other users before completing it. After turning off your view history, you can freely access the document without being spotted.

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How to Know Who Made Changes to Your Google Doc?

Google Docs allows you to know who has saved, edited, or viewed your document. Moreover, the best thing is that it not only works with the enterprise edition of the utility but provides this feature in the free version as well. Here’s how to do it in a stepwise manner.

Firstly, you need to open the document that you want to see who has made the changes recently.

Once you’ve opened it, you need to select the File option from the menu, followed by the option Version History.

Lastly, click on the option named See version history to track the changes.

If you follow the above mentioned steps properly, you should see a window appearing on your screen. It has all the details of the saves and edits on the documents including the date and time.

This is how we have to check who made the changes in Google documents in the Google Drive.

Conclusion

If your profession includes teamwork a lot, Google Docs will be a powerful tool for you. It’s also simple to obtain details into different methods and information about your documents, such their read and edit histories, as you have read above.

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Kirithika

I am Kirithika and a senior technical content writer expertise in using various Microsoft and Google tools like OneDrive, Outlook Online, Word Online, Microsoft Forms, Microsoft teams, Google Drive, etc. I love to share how-to tutorials, tips, and tricks on these tools. From last 5 years, I am trying to serve various clients across the United States of America. Check out more on About me page.