Google Docs – How to Find Documents Shared With Someone

Google DocsIn the old version of Google Docs, you could search for documents shared with someone. In the new version you can not. After much searching, I finally found a list of search codes you can use to search Google Docs and voila, you can indeed search for documents shared with people by using the “to:” prefix, i.e. to:bob@somewhere.com.

Other search operators include:

Operator Definition Example
“ ” Quotes To find documents that contain that exact phrase. “match this phrase exactly”
OR To find documents with at least one of the words. tacos OR nachos
– Hyphen Documents that don’t have a particular word. So if you want docs that mention salsa, but not dancing use… salsa -dancing
from: Documents shared from someone from:bob@gmail.com
to: Documents shared to someone to:bob@gmail.com
is:starred Items that you have marked with a star. is:starred
is:hidden or is:archived Items that you have hidden from the main Documents List by deselecting the Show in Home option. is:hidden
type: Search by the type of document. This covers: document, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing, image, video, image_or_video, pdf, and textdoc. type:spreadsheet
before:YYYY-MM-DD after:YYYY-MM-DD Find items that were edited before or after a certain day. before:2010-12-01
owner: Search according to who owns the item. owner:Frank
title: Search by the item’s title title:”Conference 2010”

12 thoughts on “Google Docs – How to Find Documents Shared With Someone”

  1. Leave out the ‘to’ and just search for the name, and the list will include documents the person is the owner of. As in search for “bob@somewhere.com” by itself to find things that Bob owned, and what was shared with him.

  2. This is an amazing reference page for google docs/google drive tips. Thank you Jeremy!

  3. how quickly does a new document get indexed by Google?
    I am trying to search on title, for documents that I have created and know where they are, and I assume if I wait long enough, that google search will find them.
    – a day perhaps?

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