Google Docs: Google has always played a major role in providing its users with the best application and features to make their tasks a bit easy. One such application by Google was Google Docs that allows the user to create, write, and edit documents both online and offline. Using Google Docs, you can make changes to previously saved documents and even save them directly to your Google drive. Another best part about Google Docs is that you can even share a document with various people and collaborate with them on a particular project.
How to get started with Google Docs?
Google Docs work on a cloud-based interface that makes it different from other traditional documents applications like MS Words, WPS word, etc. The files that are created in Google Docs directly get saved in Google Drive and you don’t need to save them externally on your system. Moreover, getting started with Google Docs is no rocket science as you just need to have a Google account for that and it can be created in a minute with your basic details.
How to create a document in Google Docs?
Follow the below mentioned steps to create a document using Google Docs:
- Go to the docs.google.com
Open Google Chrome in your desktop and enter docs.google.com in the URL bar of the page.
- Select a template.
Now, you will land on the main page of Google Docs, select the format in which you want to start like resume, letter, project proposal, and more.
- Click on the blank Google doc.
You can click the blank document option to start with a completely blank page and customize it according to your needs.
- Name your document.
After that, your untitled document will open up, now create a title by clicking the untitled document bar.
- Click the share button to share it with others.
You can also directly share the document with other people by tapping the share button and adding the participants.
- Assign permission for different people.
You can add people with different rights to the document including viewing, suggesting, and editing too.
How To use Google Docs offline?
- Firstly open Google Chrome on your desktop or laptop.
- Now download and add the Google Docs offline extension to Chrome.
- After adding the extension to Google Chrome, open a new tab, and then open Google Docs in that.
- Click on the hamburger icon and then head to Settings, after that activate the offline mode.
- After the above-mentioned steps, turn off your internet and again open Google Docs in Chrome.
- Now, you can successfully access to Google Docs without the internet.
Note: If you want to keep a particular article offline, then just hit the three-dot menu available next to the title of the document and enable the ‘available offline’ option.
How to use Google Docs offline via smartphone?
To use Google Docs offline on a smartphone, you firstly need to download the official app from the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store.
Now, open Google Docs and tap the hamburger icon, and then head to the Settings option. From there, just enable the option saying ‘Make the files available offline’. All your files will be now available offline for you to edit and modify.
Some tips related to Google Docs
The following are some tips to increase productivity at work. Let’s also see them-
1 Delete a document in Google Docs
You can easily delete a document on Google Docs by tapping the three-dot icon next to the title of the doc and clicking on the Remove button. To delete the documents, you can also open a document, click on the file button, and then select the ‘Move To Trash button’.
2 Word count in Google docs
While writing a feature article or a long-form article, you also need to keep a tab on the word count. On Google Docs, you can simply check the word count of any of the articles by a simple shortcut so that you don’t need to visit the tools section again and again. Just hold ctrl+shift+C and your document’s word count will appear on the screen in front of you.
3 Collaborate with different people
While creating a new document, there are times when you are supposed to collaborate with different people. Instead of downloading the Google Docs externally and sharing them, you can straightaway add various collaborators by clicking the share button above the edit docs page and adding the emails of the concerned people. If you want anyone to just view the docs and don’t want to give them editing rights, you can also change that by tapping on the editing button available at the right corner of the screen and change it to viewing or suggesting.
4 Strikethrough, superscript, and subscript
You can easily add any of the mentioned effects in your text on Google Docs with the help of shortcuts. For strikethrough, you need to press Alt+Shift+5, for superscript, press Ctrl+. and for the subscript, press Ctrl+, and you are done.
5 Converting Google Docs to PDF
If you want your document saved on Google Docs in the PDF format then it can be done by following a few steps. You just need to open the particular document, tap on the File menu, then hit the download button and select the PDF format. This way, your document will be converted into PDF format.
6 Explore section
One of the most amazing things about Google Docs is its explore section, it allows the user to get real-time information related to the topic or subject you are writing on. This helps you in gathering any suitable information that you want to add in your document and you can also use the explore section to get related images too. Explore tab makes Google Docs different from any other document editing traditional tools and makes it stand out of the crowd.
7 Turn spoken words into text
If you are tired of writing and want to use text to speech then it can be done with the help of Google Docs if your system has a microphone. You can press Ctrl+Shift+S or Cmd+Shift+S and then start speaking the content you wanted to write. Docs will start writing the things said by you using the standard voice to text system of Google. You can also use the commands like periods, comma, or a question mark to add any of the mentioned symbols in your document.
8 Image editor
Google Docs offers its own image editor that can be used to crop and edit images to be used in the document. You can get to the editor by just clicking on the ‘format button’ and then selecting the image options from where you can crop, adjust coloring, contrast, and brightness of the image too.
Conclusion
So, the above-mentioned tips will help you in becoming more productive with Google Docs. From collaborating on a document, explore feature, and assigning different edits to different collaborators, Google Docs offer a lot of one of a kind features that are missing in other document editors. You can start working with Google docs and even buy the premium version to enjoy more features and a lot of space to save all your articles on the cloud.
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