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

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When it comes to collaboration tools, Google Docs is certainly the pioneer of corporate teamwork. It has numerous capabilities 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 potential data.

If you’re using online office utilities powered by Google regularly for your work, you may find it really helpful to know who has accessed your document recently. Moreover, when you’re able to know who did what on your important documents, you can always stay informed.

Before the recent update, Google Docs only allows you to see who has edited your documents. Due to this, if a person doesn’t leave any comments or make changes in the document, you may never know who has read or seen your document.

Additionally, the tool also allows you to share your documents with only reading or commenting privileges. This prevents other people who access your document from making changes to it. This feature is intended for reviewers who just need to analyze the document.

The current version also provides you the liberty to configure the settings as per your requirements to see who has viewed your document. With that said, let’s take a look at how to see who has viewed a Google Doc in Google Drive. 

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

The organizations that require collaborating as an essential part of their work culture use G-Suite to make their processes faster and convenient. It includes an activity monitor feature that allows you to see the view history of your Google Doc anytime. Here’s how to do it:

  • Firstly, you need to open your desired 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
  • After accessing the document, click on an arrow icon facing upwards at the top-right corner of your screen.
How to see who has Viewed a Google Doc
  • Alternatively, you can also navigate to the “Tools” menu item to access the desired section.
activity dashboard
How to see who has Viewed a Google Doc
  • Now, you need to click on the “Activity Monitor” option that provides you insights about all the people who have accessed your document recently. All you need to do is click on the option named “All 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 guide above on how to see who has viewed a Google Doc, you can easily track viewers of your Google Doc. It also allows you to view the log of the date and time of the event.

In case you don’t see any option named activity monitor, you’re likely using the free version of Google Docs and not the enterprise edition.

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Check Comments and Viewer Details in Google Docs 

Along with the ability to determine who has viewed your Google Doc, you can also gain insights 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 form of a bar chart. It includes all the unique views received by your document in a span of seven days.
  • Comment Details – You can check the date and time of unique comments. It appears on your document for seven days in form of bar charts

With such detailed metrics, you can surely gain the most out of your collaborations. These insights not only allow you to work faster by knowing the document status in real-time. But also allows you to ensure that any important information has been read by your team.

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How to Turn-Off View History on Google Docs?

If you would like to turn off the view history of your Google Doc for any reason, then you’re surely at the right place.

Let’s take a look at some quick steps that you need to follow. 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 hop directly to the second step. However, in case you don’t, make sure you open it first by navigating to docs.google.com.
  • In the opened document, click on the upward-facing arrow located at the top-right corner of your screen to access the Activity Monitor option. The latter can also be accessed through the “Tools” menu.
  • Now when you’ve successfully opened the activity monitor interface, head over to Privacy Settings options.
Turn-Off View History on Google Docs
  • Simply toggle 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.
Turn-Off View History on Google Docs
Turn-Off View History on Google Docs

This feature can come in very handy. Especially when you’re working on a draft and don’t want to share it with other collaborators 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 desired document that you want to track
  • 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 aforementioned 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 of all the updates and insights.

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Final Verdict

If your profession involves collaboration and teamwork a lot, Google Docs is surely a powerful tool for you. Moreover, as you read above, you can easily gain insights into various metrics and details related to your documents such as their read and edit history.