Saving and sharing files

What you will need

Before you begin the course, check your Android tablet is charged up, switched on, and showing the Home screen. Your tablet operating software should also be up to date, and you should have an email account set up on your tablet.

Remember, there are lots of different brands of Android tablet, and they all do things slightly differently. Some of the screens on your tablet might look a little different to the ones on this tip sheet, but you should still be able to follow along.

Using email to look at files

Your tablet can receive and read files using an email app. For instance, if your travel agent emails you an itinerary, you can tap on it in your email app to read it.

Saving files to your tablet instead

Instead of searching your email each time you need to view the itinerary, you can save it to your tablet and access it quickly and easily using the My Files app.

You can read saved documents in My Files even when you don’t have access to Wi-Fi or mobile data, which is great when travelling.

To see how this works, follow along with the steps in this guide to save our travel itinerary to the My Files app. Remember, while you won’t have your own email with a travel itinerary to hand, the following steps will work with any kind of file you receive as an email attachment.

Opening the email in Gmail

We’ll use Gmail as our email app for this guide. If you have a different type of email account, you should still be able to follow the steps below, but they may look a little different.

1. Swipe up from the bottom of the Home screen to show the Apps screen. Then find the Gmail app and tap it.
2. The Inbox shows a list of recent emails. Our travel agent has just sent us an itinerary for our trip, so it appears as a new email at the top.

Most emails are safe, but never click on a link or open an attachment you’re unsure about. A link or file inside an email may contain viruses or other unwanted software.

1. Tap on the email to open and read it.
2. The attachment is at the bottom in a preview box. The file name tells you it’s an itinerary.
3. Instead of tapping on the attachment to open and read it, we’ll use the Download feature to save the attachment to the tablet. Tap the Download icon.
4. A little Download icon notification confirming the download will appear at the top of the screen.
5. The itinerary is now saved to our tablet.

Reading the itinerary using My Files

The My Files app will let you find and then read the itinerary you just saved. First tap the Home button to go back to the Home screen.

1. Swipe up from the bottom of the home screen to show the Apps screen, find My Files, and tap it.
2. My Files opens. Find Internal Storage on the left of this screen, and tap it to continue.
3. A list of all the folders on your tablet appears on the right. To see the files inside a folder, you just need to tap on it.
4. We downloaded the itinerary from Gmail, so find Download in the list, and tap it to see the files inside.
5. Find the file with itinerary in the name and tap it.
6. You may be asked to choose an app to open the file. Because the itinerary is a PDF file, tap the Drive PDF Viewer icon, then tap Always.
7. The itinerary will open on the screen, ready for you to read.
8. When you’ve finished, tap the Back button to close the itinerary and see the Download screen again.

Sharing files with a friend

Now, we’re going to send the itinerary to a friend as an email attachment.

1. Tap and hold on the itinerary until a row of icons appear at the bottom of the screen.
2. Find the Share option, which looks like three dots joined together, and tap on it. The Share menu appears and shows different ways you can share files and other content from your tablet.
3. Find and tap on the Gmail icon. It looks like a big red M. Gmail will open, with the itinerary already included as an email attachment.
4. Enter your friend’s email address in the To box.
5. Tap the Subject box and type in the subject of the email. Then you can tap inside the Compose email box and type a short message, if you want.
6. Tap the Send arrow in the top right of the screen to send the itinerary. The Gmail app will close automatically, and the screen will return to the list of files in the Download folder.

Deleting a file from your tablet

For this guide, we’re going to delete a file about gardening because we don’t need it anymore.

1. Tap and hold on the gardening file to bring up the options at the bottom of the screen.
2. Tap on the Delete icon. It looks like a small bin. A box will pop up asking if you want to Cancel or Delete.
3. To delete the gardening file, tap Delete, and the file will be removed from your tablet.

You should only delete files that you saved onto your tablet. It’s not recommended to delete any other files as it might cause your tablet to stop working properly.

If you decide too late that you want to keep the file, don’t worry! Provided you still have the email with the gardening attachment, or know the website you downloaded it from, you can save it to My Files again later.

Congratulations!

You’ve completed the Android tablet: Saving and sharing files activity.

Next up, we'll learn the Android tablet: Listening to podcasts activity.