Google: Hide Active Collaborators and Viewers in Docs/Sheets/Slides

Environment

U-M Google, Docs, Sheets, and Slides

Issue

How do I hide or stop collaborators and viewers who are actively viewing a Google Doc, Sheet, or Slides from being visible to one another?

Resolution

There is no specific setting available to hide collaborators and viewers from one another in a Google file.

Although it's not possible to hide collaborators from each other when editing files, it is possible to hide who's actively viewing a file. The workarounds for this are below:

  1. Publish the files to the web
    • This will only work if the file is intended to be shared publicly or with anyone at the University of Michigan.
      • You cannot restrict publication to a specific set of individuals.
    • Refer to the Google Help Center's Make Google Docs, Sheets, Slides & Forms public documentation for instructions.
  2. Replace the "/edit..." portion of the URL with "/preview"
    • This will work regardless of how the file is intended to be shared. It could be shared publicly or restricted to specific individuals.
    • This works best when sharing a link to individuals via email or posting the link on a webpage.
    • This can be done by modifying the link (URL) being shared, so that the end of it, starting with "/edit," is changed to "/preview".
      • E.g., https://docs.google.com/document/d/XXXXX/edit > https://docs.google.com/document/d/XXXXX/preview

Additional Information

Need additional information or assistance? Contact the ITS Service Center.

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Related Services / Offerings (1)

ITS-Google at U-M
This service is software bundle that includes the core Google Apps of Email, Calendar, Docs, Sites, Contacts, and Chat as well as over 40 other apps designed to improve collaboration.