More and more users are gradually becoming convinced that Google Docs, the Google suite dedicated to the management of documents and spreadsheets, has less and less to envy to other similar services for payment.
In this article we will analyze in detail some of the many strengths of the tools offered by Google that, too often, are not used to their full potential.
A close look at Google Docs
Before understanding how to make the most of Google Docs, it is good to understand what we are talking about. What is offered by Google is a suite that offers some very useful services such as:
- Documents, which allows you to manage text content in a manner not unlike Microsoft Words
- Presentations, a Power Point competitor that allows you to create demonstrative slides essential for presentations and meetings
- Sheets, the “half-brother” of Excel that allows you to create databases
- Forms, used to create and manage surveys.
As it is easy to understand, the meat to the fire is really a lot: to describe individually each function present in the various components of the suite, it would probably not be enough a book with hundreds and hundreds of pages.
In this article we assume that you know at least the basics of some tools that, among other things, in most cases are very similar to the equivalent of the Microsoft suite.
Contrary to what the Bill Gates company offers, Google Docs allows a greater level of content sharing and, precisely these features, make it ideal for those who work on the web with documents (therefore articulists, copywriters and similar works).
Add new fonts
By default, Google Docs offers more than twenty different fonts. But it is not said that these can be enough. Once you have clicked on the font selection menu, simply choose Other Fonts (the entry at the beginning of the list): this will open a window in which there will be a much wider range of characters that you can add to the list of fonts default.
Tag someone in the text using a comment
As already stated, the strength of Google Docs is in the ease of sharing content. Precisely for this reason it may be useful to tag a colleague or a friend in a precise portion of the text to capture his attention. The Google suite offers the possibility of tagging directly the person to whom a comment or a note of various nature is directed: the system will take care to deliver the tag directly, thus attracting his attention.
To insert a comment just highlight the portion of the text in question, look for Insert on the top menu and opt for Comment. Before inserting the actual text of the comment, type the symbol of the snail @ and look for the mail of your interlocutor.
Multi-level sharing
If you work with this tool, it may be useful to share documents but at the same time make sure that they are not editable by other people. For this reason, Google offers different types of sharing.
By clicking on the button at the top right SHARE, a window will open with a link. In fact, we can share in three different ways: through drop-down menus you can choose to share so that anyone with the link in question can edit, just comment or just read the content.
Alternatively you can enter the email individually and decide the permissions individually for each interested person.
History of changes
Compared to what Office offers, here there is no button to save: everything happens automatically. An advantage yes, but not in all cases … fortunately, the developers of Google have come up with a way to get us back “back in time”.
To get back to a previous version of the document in question, you can use the revision history. To perform a recovery it is sufficient to click on the File section and then on Revision History. This will open a window that will show a summary of all changes, their respective dates and their authors. Once this list is available, simply click on any version to return to that specific modification.
Use a bookmark
Using Google Docs on a working level, it can happen to deal with extremely long and complex documents. Manage a large amount of text can be more than useful to use bookmarks.
To do this, simply choose the portion of the text to be memorized, click on Insert and then on Bookmark.
Translate a document
Among the many functions present, also one able to translate all your document just in a blink of an eye. To do this you need to go under the Tools menu and select Translate document… and then choose the language in question.
Naturally, Google Translator will be used to do this, so do not expect perfect results.
The additional components
Remember that the features of Google Docs are upgradable thanks to additional components: as for Chrome in fact, this suite can also be enhanced through extensions.
To access the available extensions simply select the Extensions menu, opt for Install Additional Components and take a look at everything that can be installed. There is a large list of additional features capable to make Google Docs an even more powerful tool!