📊 Lesson 6.1: Sharing & Permissions

🤝 Why Sharing Is the Whole Point

Back in Lesson 1.1 we said the thing Google Slides does better than almost anything else is collaboration — many people, one live deck, no emailed copies. That promise is cashed in right here. A deck sitting in your Drive that nobody else can open is just a private document. The moment you share it, it becomes a shared source of truth: a pitch a whole team polishes together, a class project everyone contributes a slide to, a report your manager comments on before the big meeting.

But "sharing" is not one action — it's a small set of deliberate decisions. Who gets in? Named people, or anyone who holds the link? What can each of them do — just look, comment, or edit freely? And for how long? Getting these right is the difference between smooth collaboration and an awkward "wait, who edited my title slide?" (or worse, a confidential deck reaching someone it shouldn't).

The good news: the mental model is simple and it maps onto the same idea we've used all course. Sharing is just choosing who × what they can do. Nail those two axes and everything else — link settings, ownership, expiry — is a refinement.

🔘 The Share Button & Two Ways to Share

Open any deck and you'll find a prominent Share button in the top-right corner (it may show as a person-with-a-plus icon on a narrow screen). Click it and the Share dialog opens. This one dialog is the control center for everything in this lesson. It has two distinct halves, and understanding the split is the key to sharing confidently.

1) Share with specific people (by email)

At the top of the dialog is a box that says something like "Add people and groups." Type a person's email address (or a name from your contacts / Workspace directory), choose their role from the dropdown, and send. This is named sharing: only that specific Google account gets access, they sign in to prove it's them, and you can see and manage each person individually. This is the safest, most precise way to share — you know exactly who is in.

2) General access — "Anyone with the link"

Lower in the dialog is the General access section. By default a new deck is Restricted: only the named people above can open it. Switch it to Anyone with the link and the deck becomes reachable by anyone who has the URL — no sign-in required. You then set what those link-holders can do (Viewer, Commenter, or Editor). Copy the link and paste it anywhere, and it just works. This is wonderfully convenient — and exactly where you must be deliberate, because a link can be forwarded, pasted into a chat, or screenshotted.

⚠️ Important Note: If you're using Slides through a work or school Google Workspace account, your organization's admin may limit link sharing — for example, restricting "anyone with the link" to people inside your organization only, or blocking external sharing entirely. That's a feature, not a bug: it stops confidential decks leaking outside the company. If an option is grayed out, that's usually why.

👀 The Three Roles: Viewer, Commenter, Editor

Whichever way you share, you assign a role that decides what the person can do. There are three, and they form a simple ladder from least to most power. Choosing the right rung is the single most important sharing decision you make.

Here's the habit worth burning in — it's the through-line of this whole module: comment, don't overwrite. When someone's job is to give feedback, make them a Commenter, not an Editor. Comments sit beside the deck as a conversation you can accept, discuss, or dismiss; they never silently change your slides. An editor who "helpfully" retypes your title has overwritten your work with no discussion. Default people to the lowest role that lets them help, and promote only when real co-building begins.

🔧 Managing Access: Changing, Removing & Restricting

Sharing isn't a one-time act — access is something you tend over the life of a deck. Reopen the Share dialog any time and you'll see the current list of everyone who has access, each with their role beside them. From here you can adjust things as the project changes.

Changing someone's role

Next to each person is a role dropdown. Promote a reviewer from Commenter to Editor once real co-building starts, or demote an Editor back to Viewer once their work is done. Changes take effect immediately — the next time they open the deck, their access reflects the new role.

Removing access

To revoke someone entirely, open that same dropdown and choose Remove access. They lose the ability to open the deck at once. This is your clean "the collaboration is over" button — use it when a project wraps, when someone leaves the team, or the moment you realize a deck was shared too widely.

Restricting the link

If you turned on "Anyone with the link," you can dial it back at any time by switching General access back to Restricted — instantly, the link stops working for everyone except the named people on your list. You can also lower the link's role (say, from Editor to Viewer) without turning it off. And on the Viewer/Commenter side there's often a setting to prevent viewers and commenters from downloading, printing, or copying the deck — useful for a deck you want seen but not saved offline.

👑 Ownership, Expiry & Advanced Controls

Two more controls round out the picture. You won't need them every day, but knowing they exist saves you a real headache someday.

Transferring ownership

Every deck has exactly one owner — by default, the person who created it. The owner has powers no one else does: deleting the file for good, and transferring ownership itself. To hand a deck off — you're leaving a team, or a colleague is now the true keeper of the master pitch — make them an Editor first, then use the role menu's Transfer ownership option. Google sends them an ownership request; only once they accept do they hold the keys, and you become a regular Editor. It's a deliberate, two-sided step precisely because it's a big one.

Expiring access (Google Workspace)

On Google Workspace accounts, you can set an expiration date on a person's access — perfect for a contractor, a temporary reviewer, or an external partner who only needs the deck for a defined window. Come the date, their access simply switches off, no cleanup required. This is a paid-tier convenience; on a free personal account you achieve the same thing manually with the "Remove access" button when the time comes.

🎤 Present To vs Collaborate With — and Sharing Safely

A subtle but freeing idea: you don't have to share a deck to show it to people. There are two very different situations, and matching your sharing to the situation prevents most mistakes.

Presenting to a group

If you're standing in front of a room, or screen-sharing on a video call, your audience simply watches — you're driving. They need no access to the file at all. If you also want to send the deck afterward "for reference," share it as Viewer (or export a PDF). Nobody needs edit rights to sit in the audience.

Collaborating with a group

If several people are genuinely building the deck — the team pitch, the group project — that's where you share as Editor and lean into real-time co-editing (the whole of next lesson). Even then, reviewers who only give notes stay Commenters. Editing is for builders; commenting is for advisers.

🎯 Project: Share the Deck & Inspect Access

Time to put your running deck in someone else's hands — safely and deliberately. You'll send a Commenter link to a friend or classmate (so they can give feedback without touching your slides), then open the access list to confirm exactly who's in and at what level. This is the "comment, don't overwrite" principle in action, and it sets up next lesson's live collaboration beautifully.

Before I click Send / Copy link, I asked:

WHO gets in?
- [ ] Specific person by email (named)  ... or
- [ ] Anyone with the link (semi-public)

WHAT can they do?
- [ ] Viewer     (look only)
- [x] Commenter  (feedback, no editing)  <- for reviewers
- [ ] Editor     (build alongside me)

Is there anything SENSITIVE on these slides?
- [ ] No -> safe to share
- [ ] Yes -> keep it Restricted / named-only, or remove it

After sharing: reopen Share and read the access list.

🧭 Best Practices for Sharing

✅ Do's

• Default to named sharing. A guest list you can see and manage beats a link you can't recall.
• Give the lowest useful role. Viewer for audiences, Commenter for reviewers, Editor only for co-builders.
• Audit the access list before a big send. Ten seconds confirming who's in is the cheapest insurance there is.

❌ Don'ts

• Don't make reviewers Editors. Feedback belongs in comments, not silent overwrites — comment, don't overwrite.
• Don't treat "anyone with the link" as private. A link can be forwarded anywhere; assume it's semi-public.
• Don't put truly sensitive info in a widely shared deck. Keep it Restricted and named-only, or leave it out.

📓 Learning Journal

📝 Lesson Summary

🎉 What You've Accomplished

Your running deck is no longer a private artifact — it's shared, deliberately, with the right person at the right level. You understand the two ways to share, the three roles and when to use each, how to manage and revoke access, and the honest security realities of a link that can travel. You've inspected your own access list and practiced the "share narrow, widen later" habit. That's a genuinely professional skill.

❓ Common Questions at This Stage

🔭 Looking Ahead

In the next lesson — Lesson 6.2: Comments & Real-Time Co-Editing — we bring that shared deck to life. You'll learn to add comments on slides and objects, @-mention teammates to assign work, resolve and revisit comment threads, and experience the real-time magic of multiple people building one live deck together — colored cursors and all. It's the thing Slides does best, and now that your deck is shared, you're perfectly set up for it.

✅ Before the Next Lesson

• Confirm your running deck is shared with at least one person as a Commenter
• Have that person (or a second account of yours) ready to comment next lesson
• Write your Learning Journal entry for this lesson

📚 Additional Resources

• Share files from Google Drive (Google Support)
• Choose who to share with & how they can use your file (Google Support)
• slides.google.com — open the app