How to See Who Viewed Your Google Doc, Drive File or Notion Page

For eligible Docs, Sheets and Slides, open the Activity dashboard with edit access. It can show viewers and trends inside your organization. Google says users cannot view activity for files outside their domain, and viewers can hide their view history. If the file is not owned by a work or school account, view history is unavailable. Google also says the dashboard is not for auditing or legal purposes.

An outside investor is outside your Workspace domain, so Google’s Activity dashboard will not name them as a viewer. Sharing permissions tell you who can access a file, which is different from who opened it. Do not infer a read from a permission grant or a delivered email. The same limit matters for a Drive link inside a startup data room.

Notion page analytics can show total and unique views and a list of identified viewers to page owners and editors. But Notion says anonymous public web viewers do not appear in that list. Members can also opt out of recording. A public investor page may get view counts without telling you which outside person read it.

A document-sharing tool can host the PDF itself and record visits, pages seen, time per page and downloads for that viewer link. An email gate can ask visitors to identify themselves before opening it. That is more useful for external deck sharing than a Workspace-only activity view, but an entered email may be unverified and a forwarded link can reach someone else. Compare attachments and tracked links.

Use the activity to check whether your material reached a reader and which files deserve a follow-up question. Avoid telling someone you know exactly what they read or implying a time counter proves interest. Pantheon’s document sharing is in invite-only alpha and shows per-viewer document activity, pages seen and time per page; it does not automatically match a viewer to a contact.