@nedbat if I click the "move icon", the panel that appears shows a "current location" that matches what I expect (moved a document to a folder and the current location pointed to the folder).

But it's very confusing. I think documents exist in a single place. They also have a unique internal id that "persists" even if the name changes.

@nedbat File -> Details should show you the location (but in practice only if you have access to it, so mostly it doesn't)

@nedbat

ALT

@nedbat Maybe not what you mean, but if you are using Google Docs you'll only see the docs from all of your Google Drive locations smooshed together.

To see the actual location of the docs in your Drive you have to open Google Drive. When you "Move" you are moving it within its Drive location.

This is especially annoying in the phone apps, where you have to go all the way out of Docs and into Drive in order to organize your docs. Any docs you create in the Docs app just land at the root of your Drive.

@nedbat Are you saying you want to measure a document's location and contents at the same time? I think you will find there are laws against that.

@celestiallavendar When I open Drive, I see a table view of documents with a column labelled "Location". Many of the entries have a location of "Shared with me" which doesn't sound like a location. Again, what I'm looking for is some kind of concise description of the data model here.

@nedbat "Shared with me" does seem to be a folder, containing links to all the folders or individual documents shared by others with you (external to your drive root). I'm not sure if Drive actually has folders or just pretends, but it certainly acts like it does

@nedbat have you read the API docs?https://developers.google.com/workspace/drive/api/guides/about-files

@castaway thanks, this might be the closest. I'm surprised there isn't something user-oriented to explain it.