Accessing Google docs

[mreiss]

Google won't let me access Google docs because I'm not the admistrator or something like that because the account is managed by Telus. How do I get around this?

[HSL]

Unfortunately, this is a "known issue". When Telus moved customer eMail accounts to Google Workspace they did not enable access to Google Docs or Google Maps.

The solution is:

1) Create a normal Gmail account (yep ... a 2nd non Telus Gmail account)

2) When accessing Google docs .. ensure that you are logged out of your Telus Gmail account by going to mail.google.com in your browser and a) Log out of your Telus account and b) Log in to your new non Telus Gmail account.

Downsides:

Other than the annoyance factor (yes .. access to Google Docs *should* be grantable by the Telus Google Workspace administrators but may not actually be grantable due to Telus/Google contract, financial, or other reasons) you may find that if your Telus Gmail account has received an invitation or a link to a Google Document you still may not be able to open that document by forwarding the invitation to your new Gmail account. The reason for that is that access  to the document is restricted to the original address of the recipient... i.e. the invitation was extended to the Telus Gmail account and only that account may open the document.

There are workarounds: a) the document owner can CC the invitation to your new Gmail account. b) the document owner can, as the documents' administrator, grant access to the document to a list of contacts ... one of which would be your new Gmail account.

That being said .. if you are using Google Docs for solely your own activities then simply managing those documents through your secondary Google account should work fine.

[TELUS_Support]

You may have a profile mismatch or be logged in under a different email. Have you had the chance to speak with our team about this?

[HSL]

@TELUS_Support are you saying that Google Docs is now accessible through a Telus/Google account ?

If so I would like to hear more as I have an elderly neighbour who, as a member of a support group, has never been able to access a Google document invitation from his Telus/Google account.

His calls to Telus support went nowhere.

It would be great to hear that this issue has been resolved. A link to Telus FAQ on this would be helpful.

[TELUS_Support]

I'm not sure why the calls 'went nowhere' but I'm only aware of one solution for now:

- log out of TELUS email powered by Google, use a different web browser, or try with an Incognito browser window.

TELUS email powered by Google isn't a normal personal Google account and doesn't include all of the standard 'free' G-Suite stuff like Google Maps, Docs, etc. Unlike those accounts which are ad supported, ours doesn't display the Google ads. Also, our email is governed by our own privacy policy which prevents the normal scanning of emails, contacts, etc. to deliver targeted ads. Because of this, if someone wants to use the other G-Suite services, they'd need to either log out of the TELUS email powered by Google, use a separate browser, or try Incognito mode. Just need to access them from a different session that's not logged into the TELUS account.

[westonc]

Can you turn on the free features?  Better yet, move us off of gmail which is a horrible service.  I have lost hundreds of emails because Gmail deletes all emails in a chain if you delete the last one.  Creating another email account with gmail does not help the issue of not being able to open google docs when sent to my telus account and, due to legal reasons, some institutions will not allow me to have multiple accounts or simply won't send to gmail accounts instead of my registered telus account.

[Nighthawk]

The telus.net email accounts are NOT standard Gmail accounts and are using an enterprise Google Workspaces setup. As @TELUS_Support mentioned earlier in this discussion, Telus.net email "doesn't display the Google ads. Also, our email is governed by our own privacy policy which prevents the normal scanning of emails, contacts, etc. to deliver targeted ads."

Google will also charge for every single feature added to an enterprise Workspaces account and they will charge for ALL email accounts to get the feature and not just a handful. It would get very expensive quickly as there are millions of telus.net email accounts.

I would assume that Telus went with Google Workspaces as it's cheaper than their prior server provider and/or more reliable. I suspect that Telus stopped using their last provider after that provider screwed up and tanked the email services for weeks and lost a lot of user data, ie. emails, from those accounts.

[Sheep]

The main challenge even with the above is mainly around Google Docs.  They are sent to you in your telus.net account email and that is where you access the link to open the shared documents.  If you copy the link and try to access from a regular Google site or second google account gmail, the documents do not open.  27 year customer and ready to leave Telus with this irritation.

[westonc]

a

[westonc]

The gmail email is horrible.  If you delete the last item in a chain of emails then empty your deleted items, all the emails get deleted.  

Accessing Google Docs is impossible if the invite was sent to telus email.