Drive 2: document structure

What Drive produces, how structure is preserved in Word, Excel and PowerPoint, and where files are filed.

Real files, not exports

Drive produces Word documents with genuine heading levels, Excel sheets with live formulas rather than pasted values, and PowerPoint decks with real slides. Opening one in the desktop application gives you something you can edit, not something you have to rebuild.

The distinction matters most for spreadsheets. A sheet of numbers is a report; a sheet with formulas is a model somebody can change an assumption in.

How structure is preserved

Content is written as structured markup and converted, so headings become heading styles, lists become lists, and tables become tables. A document that looked structured on screen is structured in the file.

This is why a document asked for as markdown comes back with a real Word outline rather than a wall of body text with bold lines in it.

Where files land

Files are filed into the folder that matches the work, and meeting documents go into the meeting documents folder automatically. Folder names are unique across your account, so a file goes to one unambiguous place.

Folders are a single level by default. Both the web and mobile clients show one level, and a folder nested inside another is not visible in either.

Editing and re-generating

A document can be revised in place: asking for a change produces a new version of the same file rather than a second file with a similar name.

Versions are kept, so a change that went the wrong way can be compared against what was there before.