How To: Use Google Docs with your Existing Email

Here at Nimble AMS, we embrace living in the cloud in all aspects of the work we do. Just one example of why we love living in the cloud: the ease of collaborating on shared documents.

It’s so much easier to have a single document that is the same one everyone can see and edit, compared to passing files back & forth among users and then wondering who has the latest version. We use Google Drive internally and with our clients to make that collaboration easy.

A common misperception that people often have is that they need a Gmail account to be able to use Google Drive — that is, Google documents, spreadsheets, etc. Not so! You can create a Google Account that is linked with any existing email account, which might be a Gmail account but could be your current work email. in other words, a Google Account is different from a Google Gmail account.

Want to give it a try?

1. Just go to the Google home page and click Drive on the menu bar. ​

2. On the Google Drive home page, click the Sign Up button in the upper right corner. ​

3. When you get to the field where you could create a new Gmail account, just click the link that says “I prefer to use my current email address” and provide whatever email address you want to use. ​

Then fill out the rest of the form.

You’ll have to log in to the email address you provided to confirm that you control it and then you’ll have your Google Account linked to your non-Gmail email address. Whenever you want to access your Google Drive documents, spreadsheets, presentations, etc., you just log in with your own email address.