How to Recover Permanently Deleted Files and Folders in Google Drive

When you delete any file or folder in your Google Drive, it is moved to the trash folder. The deleted file stays in trash for 30 days and then it is permanently deleted. You can right-click the deleted file in the trash bin and select Restore to undelete the file.

Restore Permanently Deleted Files

If you fail to restore a deleted file within the 30-day window, or if you have emptied the trash manually, the files will be permanently deleted from your Google Drive.

You can however contact Google Support and they may restore the deleted files for you.

1. Go to support.google.com/drive?p=file_recovery and sign-in with the Google account you used to delete the file.

2. Provide your first name, last name, and check the consent box to confirm that you are trying to recover files you deleted from Google Drive.

You’ll receive an email from drive-noreply@google.com confirming that your request has been received and that it may take up to 48 hours for the files to be restored. (It usually takes less than 12 hours.)

Google recommends that you avoid emptying your trash while the file recovery process is ongoing. Also, please note that files that you have yourself uploaded to Google Drive may be recovered in this process. If you are not the owner of a file, it cannot be restored through this process.

Once the restoration process is complete, Google Support will send you another email confirming that the files have been restored. You can now open your Google Drive and the permanently deleted files and folders will be visible in their original location.

The above steps are only valid for individual Google accounts. If you have a Google Workspace account, you would need to get in touch with your domain administrator to restore files. Also, the restoration process will restore all deleted files, it is currently possible to restore individual files or folders.

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View Microsoft Office Files in the Browser without Downloading

You can use the filetype: operator in Google to search for Office files of specific types. For instance, a query like invoice template filetype:xls will find public Excel spreadsheets that match the search query. Similarly, you can find Word documents and PowerPoint presentations on the Internet by appending filetype:doc or filetype:ppt to the search query.

How do you view a file that you found on the Internet in the browser itself?

All modern browsers have built-in support for PDF files so you can view them directly in the browser without downloading the file to your computer. However, if you are working with Office files, you can use simple URL hacks to view the file inside Google Docs or Microsoft Office Viewer.

View Office Files in Browser

We’ve two sample files, an Excel spreadsheet and a Word file, hosted on the Internet. The file URLs are provided below and the requirement is to view these files directly in the browser.

https://www.labnol.org/files/word.docx [Word document]
https://www.labnol.org/files/excel.xlsx [Excel spreadsheet]

Google Drive Viewer

Google Drive includes a built-in viewer feature that allows you to view Office files directly in the browser without downloading them. The files are streamed from the hosting website and not uploaded to your Google Drive either.

To view the file, replace FILE_URL with the link of the file you want to view (see example)

https://drive.google.com/viewer?url=FILE_URL

If you would like to embed an Office file in your website with the Google Drive viewer, the HTMl would be as below. You would need to replace the actual URL of the document and may also adjust the height and width attributes of the IFRAME tag.

<iframe
  src="https://drive.google.com/viewer?embedded=true&hl=en-US&url=FILE_URL"
  width="500px"
  height="350px"
  frameborder="0"
></iframe>

Microsoft Office Viewer

Similar to Google Drive Viewer, Microsoft Office also offers a online document viewer to help you to view Word documents, Excel Spreadsheets and PowerPoint decks directly in the browser without downloading them.

Simply replace FILE_URL with the URL of the Office file. (see example)

https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=FILE_URL

In addition to previewing Office files, the Office Web Apps Viewer tool can also be used for embedding Microsoft Office documents into your website or blog. The embed code would be something like this:

<iframe
  src="https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/embed.aspx?src=FILE_URL"
  width="500px"
  height="350px"
  frameborder="0"
></iframe>

While Office Web Apps viewer is definitely a better option that Google Docs Viewer, a limitation is that it only works with Office Files, Google Drive Viewer can also handle PDFs, Photoshop files and even AutoCAD drawings.

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How to Create Photo Stickers in Canva

This quick tutorial will walk you through the steps to create your own custom stickers from photos in Canva. The basic idea is that you remove the background from the photo, add a thick white border around the cut out image and save it as a PNG file with a transparent background.

Here are the steps:

Step 1: Add the Photo to Canvas

Create a new design in Canva and drag the photo from your desktop to the canvas.

Step 2: Remove the Image Background

Select the image, click the Edit Image button and choose the BG Remover option to instantly remove the background. Click Apply to save the changes.

Step 3: Add a White Outline

While the photo is selected, go to Shadows and choose the Glow option. Set the background color of the glow to white, set the blur to 0 and the transparency to 100%. You can now play around with the Size slider to get the desired thickness of the outline.

These steps were performed on the Canva website but you can also do them inside the Canva app on your iPad or Android phone.

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How to Save Money on your Microsoft Office 365 Subscription

The personal edition of Microsoft Office 365 is available for $6.99 per month on the official Microsoft website. This license includes all Microsoft Office apps. With the personal license, you’ll be able to install Microsoft Office on all your computers, phones and tablets through you can only be signed in to 5 device at the same time.

You may buy a license for Microsoft Office 365 through the Microsoft website, through in-app purchases inside the Apple App Store or Google Play store or through online stores like Amazon.

Office 365 Prices Comparison

I did a quick comparison of Office 365 prices across different regions and it is obvious that the most affordable option is Amazon. For instance, if you are looking to buy Microsoft 365 subscription in India, you’ll save around 20% when the purchase is made through Amazon vis-a-vis the Microsoft Store. The savings are even higher for UK customers.

Country / Region	Price on Microsoft Store	Price on Amazon Website	Savings
United States	$69.99	$58.99	16%
India	₹4,899	₹3,949	20%
France	€69,00	€59,99	13%
United Kingdom	£59.99	£42.99	28%

Buying Office 365 through Amazon

When you buy a Microsoft 365 subscription through Amazon, Amazon will send a 16-digit license key to the email address associated with your Amazon account. It may take 15-30 minutes for the license key to arrive.

Once you have received the code, go to setup.office.com and sign-in with the Microsoft Office where you wish to use the Office 365 subscription. Enter the product key and click on the “Activate” button.

Next, launch Word, Outlook or any other Microsoft Office app on the computer and sign-in with the same Microsoft account.

Also see: Buy Udemy Courses for Less

Things to note

The Office 365 subscription purchased on Amazon is exactly the same as the one offered on the Microsoft website but the price is cheaper. Once the license is activated, you’ll manage the subscription through your Office.com dashboard.

There are a few things to note when you buy an Office 365 license outside the Microsoft store.

1. There could be geo restrictions in place. For instance, an Office license acquired from the Amazon US website may not be activated in India.
2. If you wish to opt for monthly billing instead of paying for the full year, you’ll have to buy through the Microsoft website or make an in-app purchase on your Android or iPhone.
3. This is important. If you have purchased Office 365 from Microsoft, you can request a return but licenses purchased through Amazon may not be returnable in every region.

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How to Copy Email Messages from Google Workspace to another Gmail Account

Your organization is currently using Gmail with Google Workspace for email. You are moving to another company and would like to archive all your existing email messages before the contract is terminated and the emails are permanently deleted from Gmail servers.

How to Copy Google Workspace Emails to another Gmail Address

Our previous email migration guide discussed ShuttleCloud, a service built into Gmail that uses Gmail APIs to copy your emails from one Gmail account to another. That approach, however, will not work when you are transferring emails from Google Workspace (or Google Apps) to a free Gmail account.

Here’s an updated step-by-step guide for easily transferring your emails from an existing Google Workspace / GSuite / Google Apps (Legacy) account to a new Gmail address.

Step 1: Enable POP Download in Gmail

In your existing Gmail (Google Workspace) account, go to Settings, click the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab, choose Enable POP for all mail in the POP download section and save your changes.

Step 2: Enable Less Secure Apps

Most modern apps work with the OAuth protocol that do not require you to share your Gmail password with third-party apps, the POP3 protocol does require your password in plain text to download your emails.

While you are logged into the Google account, open myaccount.google.com/security and scroll down to the Less secure app access section. Here, click the Turn on access button. Google will automatically turn this setting OFF if it’s not being used.

Step 3: Generate App Password

Please ensure that 2-Step Verification is enabled in your Google account else you’ll receive a message saying The setting you are looking for is not available for your account. when generating the app password.

While you are logged into the Google account, go to myaccount.google.com/apppasswords, choose Custom from the Select App drop-down, enter a name (like Backup Gmail through POP) and click the Generate button to generate the app-specific password.

Make a note of the 16-character long app password since it will not be shown again. This is just like your normal password, this app password grants complete access to your Google Account.

Step 3: Transfer Emails from GSuite to Gmail

Open a new incognito window in Google Chrome, go to gmail.com and sign-in with your new Gmail account where you would like to transfer your old emails. Next, go to Settings, click the Accounts and Import tab, and choose Import mail and contacts.

In the pop-up window, enter the full email address of your old Gmail account hosted on Google Workspace (GSuite or Google Apps). Click Continue.

In the next step, enter the app-specific password of your old Gmail account that you’ve generated in the previous step. The POP username is the same as your email address while the pop server is pop.gmail.com. Choose port 995 and enable the “Use SSL” setting.

Enable the settings “Leave a copy of retrieved messages on the server” and “Label incoming messages” to easily identify emails fetched from the old address. Click “Start Import” and Gmail will immediately start copying your old messages to your new email address.

That’s it. The process may take a while to complete based the size of your mailbox. The email transfer happens in the cloud so may shut down the computer and it will continue importing the emails.

PS: This method is recommended for transferring the entire mailbox to another email account. If you would like to transfer a select number of email messages, look at the Gmail bulk email forwarder.

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How to Embed Google Maps in your Website Responsively and Lazily

It take two easy steps to embed Google Maps in your web pages. While you are on the Google Maps website, search for the place or area that you wish to embed, click the hamburger icon in the upper left corner and choose the Share or embed map option from the menu. You may embed standard maps, satellite maps, or even street views.

Google Maps resize automatically based on the device size

Embed Google Maps Responsively

This web page contains a sample map embedded using the default embed code provided by Google Maps. The embedded map is non-responsive. What it means is if you open the page on a device other than your desktop computer, the Google Map won’t fit the screen and you’ll have to scroll the page horizontally to see the complete map.

Here’s another web page that contains the same Google Map but now the map has been embedded responsively. Thus, if you resize the browser or view the page on a mobile phone, the embedded map would adjust its size automatically based on the size of the device where that map is being viewed.

How to Embed Google Maps Responsively

This is the default embed code generated by Google Maps:

<iframe
  src="https://www.google.com/maps/embed"
  width="600"
  height="450"
  style="border:0;"
  allowfullscreen=""
  loading="lazy"
></iframe>

As specified in the height and width parameters of the embed code, the default height for the embedded map objet is 450px or 75% of the default width (600px).

If you wish to transform this static sized Google Map into one that is responsive, all you have to do is add a few CSS styles to your web page and wrap the embed IFRAME inside these rules.

The new embed code with responsive style will be something like this. You can change the value of padding-bottom (line #4) from 75% to something else for a different aspect ratio.

<style>
  .google-maps {
    position: relative;
    padding-bottom: 75%; // This is the aspect ratio
    height: 0;
    overflow: hidden;
  }
  .google-maps iframe {
    position: absolute;
    top: 0;
    left: 0;
    width: 100% !important;
    height: 100% !important;
  }
</style>

<div class="google-maps">
  <iframe
    src="https://www.google.com/maps/embed"
    width="600"
    height="450"
    style="border:0;"
    allowfullscreen=""
    loading="lazy"
  ></iframe>
</div>

Lazy Loading Google Maps

Lazy Loading is a technique that allows you to load Google Maps only when the user scrolls to the position on the page where that map is embedded. This helps improve your website performance and your site’s web vitals score as the heavy JavaScript code that loads Google Maps is not loaded until the user scrolls to the map.

Earlier, websites had to use the Intersection Observer API to gradually load maps and images as they become visible on the screen. This is no longer the case as most modern browsers now support the loading attribute on the img and <iframe> elements.

Simply add loading='lazy' to the IFRAME element and browser will defer loading of Google Maps that are off-screen until the user scrolls near them. A similar technique can be used to embed Instagram videos and photos.

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