Google Sites

A reader recently asked about Google Sites. Her question: How could she import Google Drive files into Google Sites? Like many Google Sites users, her organization uses Google Sites for an intranet, and she wanted to bring some documents stored on Google Drive into the site. Is it possible to import documents into Google Sites?

The short answer: While it is possible to do this with Google Drive documents, presentations, spreadsheets, and drawings, as well as YouTube videos, other types of files are not supported (more on that, further down the page).

Let’s see how to bring a Google Drive file into Sites. It’s easy. If you are in “edit” mode for a page, or create a new page, click the “Insert” tab, and you’ll see a bunch of options to select Documents, Presentations, Spreadsheets, Drawings, etc. Here are the import options:

The choices for Documents, Presentations, Spreadsheets, and Drawings correspond to the Google Drive files associated with the same account. You can then browse until you find the Google Drive file you want to insert, and select it. It will then be embedded into the page.

However, you cannot add non-Google Drive file formats, such as Microsoft Word documents or Excel spreadsheets that you are storing in Google Drive. They either won’t be visible, or you’ll get an error message that says “The URL is not supported”. In addition, the Google Drive files you import into Google Sites have to be associated with the same Google account.