My Files & Documents

Open Files. The folder list on the left has six fixed folders: Inbox, Quick Notes, Documents, Projects, Media and Shared. Folders you create yourself are under Your folders, and Trash is at the bottom.

Anything your team creates, and any file you upload without choosing a folder, lands in Inbox with a Filed by Operly chip until you review it. Your team files only into folders that already exist.

The fixed folders cannot be renamed, moved or deleted. You can nest your own folders up to five levels deep.

Use the Add menu (the + beside a folder, or New on a phone): New doc, New spreadsheet, New subfolder or Upload file. The item is created in the folder you chose. A new subfolder can go up to five levels down.

You can also ask a team member to write one, for example “Write up my meeting notes as a document in Projects.” If you do not name a folder, it goes to Inbox.

Documents save automatically a moment after you stop typing. The header shows Unsaved changes until the save lands.

The editor works like a normal word processor, and there is no separate edit mode. The toolbar has undo and redo, Heading 1 to Heading 3, bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, inline code, text color, highlight, bulleted, numbered and task lists, alignment, links, images, tables, code blocks, quotes and dividers.

On a computer, type / on a line to open a block menu (headings, lists, To-do list, Quote, Callout, Divider, Code block, Table, Photo). Code blocks are highlighted for common programming languages.

Documents your team writes open in the same editor, so you can edit them freely.

Choose New spreadsheet from the Add menu. You get a grid of 100 rows and 26 columns. Click a cell and type, or start with = to enter a formula such as =A1+B1 or =SUM(A1:A5).

The toolbar has bold, italic, alignment, number, currency and percentage formats, text color, cell fill, Add Row, Add Column, Delete Row and Delete Column. Import CSV and Export CSV move data in and out.

Ask a team member to build a spreadsheet from data you give them. Sheets they create from CSV can have up to 1,000 rows and 50 columns.

Choose Upload file from the Add menu, or drag files onto the Files page. They go into the folder you are in.

Operly reads the text of PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel and RTF files, and of text-based files such as .txt, .md, .csv, .json, .html and .xml, so your team can use what is inside them. A file over 25 MB uploads but is not read automatically, and Operly tells you when a file could not be read, for example a scanned PDF with no selectable text or a password-protected PDF.

Images, video and audio upload too and open in a viewer.

Press Ctrl+K (⌘K on a Mac) on the Files page to open Quick find, then type in Search files and folders…. It matches file and folder names. The Search files… box on the Files page searches too.

To find something by what it says, ask a team member. They can search the contents of your documents by meaning, so a question like “what did we decide about the budget?” can turn up notes that never use that word. They also search the knowledge bases you set up in Settings > Team.

Clear, descriptive titles help both you and your team find things. See asking AI about your own documents.

Open a file’s menu (right-click it, or use its options button) for Open, Rename, Move to…, Bookmark (or Remove bookmark), Duplicate and Delete. Bookmark and Duplicate are for documents only. Folders have Open, New doc inside, New subfolder, Rename, Move to… and Delete.

You can also drag a file or folder onto another folder. The six fixed folders cannot be renamed, moved or deleted, and folders cannot go deeper than five levels.

Deleting a file or folder moves it to Trash. You can restore it for 30 days, after which it is deleted for good. Open Trash in the folder list and choose Restore.

A folder comes back together with the files that went into Trash with it. If its parent folder was deleted too, it restores to Inbox.

To remove something sooner, choose Delete forever. That cannot be undone and also removes the item’s version history.

Yes. Open the document and choose History in its header (on a computer). Version history lists earlier versions with the time each was saved, and the current one is marked Current. Choose Restore beside an older version to make it the current one.

If a team member rewrites a document, the previous version stays in this list so you can restore it. A version taken just before a deletion is marked as such.

Open the document and choose Share. Turn on Share via link and pick whether anyone with the link can view or edit it. You can also set a password, an expiry date and whether people may download.

To invite specific people, enter an email address and choose Can view or Can edit. The panel shows Who has access and how many views it has had.

Link sharing is off until you switch it on. Anyone you share a link with can open it, so share it only where you are comfortable doing so.

Select text in a conversation or in a document. A Quick Note button appears next to the selection. Choose it to open Save to Quick Notes, where you can give the note a title, edit the text and pick a folder, then save. If you leave the title empty, it is called Quick Note.

Your team can also find these notes when you ask.

If your team has a workspace computer, open a file’s menu in Files and choose Send to computer. Operly copies the file there so your team can work on it. Finished work is saved back to Files.

The menu item only appears when your workspace has a computer. See the computer page.