Thank you, Walt. Maybe I'm just a bit dense, but I'm not sure what you mean, or where those options are in the Affinity programs. So for Designer - if I want to 1) place an image that is stored on Drive into my document, how would I do that? From the "Place" dialog/pop-up, my Drive folders are not an option I see anywhere there. or 2) from Resource Manager if I click "Make Linked" the same box pops up. I only see local files & folders there.
I'm thinking that the problem is due to the fact that I don't, and cannot, have the Google "Backup & Sync" program installed - which would add Drive to Windows File Explorer but also does so by syncing the selected folders and actually downloading and storing copies on the local computer hard drive. In this case, I'm on my work computer and can't do that with my personal Drive. So maybe I'm out of luck?
Thanks again for your help with this.