Summary
This article explains how to hide active collaborators and viewers while working in Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides.
Body
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:
- 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.
- 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.