Some recent updates to Google Docs have made the online word processor even easier to use. Roland Waddilove explores the new features
If you have a Google account, you have access to an office suite of applications on Google Drive consisting of a word processor, spreadsheet, presentations and more. If you haven’t yet tried it, you should. The applications run in a web browser and have all the features most people need. This Micro Mart article, for example, was written using Google Docs running in Chrome.
If you have already discovered Google’s office suite, have you noticed the new features in Docs? Like all Google apps, it’s frequently updated, and every month it seems like there’s something different. Sometimes the new features are obvious, but not always, so here are some recent changes you might have missed.
Google Docs Outline Tool
Short documents written in Google Docs are easy to navigate, and if the whole text does not fit on the screen, then you can simply scroll up and down a bit to see everything. When documents are long and are constructed from many different sections and subsections, it can be difficult to see the overall picture.
Google Docs now displays an outline of the document consisting of the headings and subheadings. The outline appears in the margin to the left of the document. It enables you to see a bird’s eye view of the document and see the order of the sections. You can easily see if sections need rearranging for example.
You can also use the outline to navigate the document. Instead of scrolling through many screens of text, you can click the headings to jump straight to a section. This makes it easy to quickly view and edit the various parts of a long document.
It’s an automatic feature, so you don’t need to mark the headings in any special way. As the document grows, it seems to reach a point where Docs automatically starts to show the headings in the outline panel on the left. It probably looks for a blank line and short sentence, which is often used to separate one section in a document from another.
You won’t see it with short documents, probably because it’s unnecessary, so if you don’t immediately see it, keep on typing. Instead of waiting for it to appear automatically, you can force it to appear by going to the Tools menu and selecting Document Outline.
Create EPUB Books In Google Docs
E-books have really taken off in recent years, with many authors self-publishing their writing. They’re convenient to read in apps like Amazon Kindle, Google Play Books, Apple iBooks and others.
Google Docs now lets you export documents in EPUB format, which makes it even easier to use Docs to create your e-book. There’s no need to export to one format, such as Word, and then use another application to convert that to e-book format. Now you just write and export as EPUB, by going to File > Download as. There are no settings, and the document is saved to the disk drive as a .epub file.
Google Docs Auto-correct
If you’re a regular Google Docs user, you might have noticed that it would change the text as you’re writing. This may have started happening because of an update to the app or a change of default settings. When writing Micro Mart articles, the weird names, acronyms and initialisms that are used with computer technology will sometimes be automatically changed by Google Docs.
In other subjects, the punctuation and grammar would be wrong, but here it’s right. Lowercase words at the start of sentences or words with the first letter lowercase and the second letter uppercase, for example. Google Docs would capitalise the first letter in a sentence and make other unwanted changes.
This is the auto-correct feature, of course, but there are a number of options you can toggle to suit the style of your writing or the subject matter. You can configure the auto-correction features and turn them off if it changes correct words to incorrect ones. Some company names are lowercase too, not to mention Apple’s use of the small i in iPad, iPod, iMac and so on.
Auto-correction is more of a hindrance than a help for tech writing. You might find it useful in your writing, though. To enable or disable these auto-correction features, go to the Tools menu in Google Docs and select Preferences.
Time Limited Sharing
Documents created on Google Drive are easily shared with other people. You just right-click a document and then select Share on the menu. Add the email addresses of the people you want to share it with.
A new feature that’s beginning to be rolled out to some users is time-limited access. This is for people who you give permission to view or comment on articles. After clicking Share and adding one or more email addresses, click the Advanced link in the bottomright corner and then click Send. The list of people the document is shared with is displayed, and on the right of each one is a little clock or stopwatch icon. Click it, and there’s an option to limit access to seven days, 30 days or a custom time period.
The feature is being rolled out in stages, and it could take two months for everyone to get it, but you might be luck and already have it. Try creating a document on Google Drive, then share it and see.
Voice Typing And Commands
If you’re producing a long letter, document or perhaps writing a book using Google Docs (which some people do, by the way), there’s no need for your lack of typing abilities to hold you back. Just speak and Google Docs will convert it into text and insert it into the document using voice recognition.
Open a Docs document, go to the Tools menu and select Voice typing or press Ctrl+Shift+S. A microphone icon appears in the left margin; clicking it turns on the computer’s microphone, and Docs begins listening. When you pause to take a breath, it inserts the text. Click the microphone again to turn it off and return to typing on the keyboard.
You can now speak almost any command too. For example, ‘Select line’, ‘Select next word’, ‘Select paragraph’, ‘Align right’, ‘Bold’, ‘Increase font size’, ‘Insert table’ and dozens more. There are too many to list here, so to see a full list of them, go to support.google.com/docs/answer/4492226. Most are fairly obvious, so just try speaking what you want.
It can sometimes mistake a command for text you wanted to enter, so this is a feature you might want to try first before relying on it to format an important document. You can always use the Undo button if a mistake is made.
Easier Commenting
Comments or notes can be embedded within documents, and it’s now easier than ever. Move the mouse over to the right side of the document, and when it gets near the edge, an icon appears. It jumps from headings to paragraphs, and clicking the icon enables a comment to be added.