Throughout my academic and professional journeys, one thing has remained my constant ally: Google Docs. Not only is having all your documents available no matter where you are super helpful, but the software itself is surprisingly versatile and intricate. I have never encountered anything I couldn’t do with Google Docs, from signing a contract to seamlessly working with huge groups of collaborators. There are other, smaller hacks for the tool that you may not even know about, though. Its business applications are plentiful, but let’s focus on what Google Docs can do for students, especially.
Google Docs hacks for essays and notes
So much of schoolwork centers on writing, from essays to memos to notes, so here are the hacks that will serve you best when you’re in the zone on a paper:
Easily change the capitalization formatting of anything in the doc by highlighting it and choosing “Format,” then “Text.” At the bottom of the menu, you’ll see “Capitalization” and hovering over it gives you three options: “lowercase,” “UPPERCASE,” and “Title Case.” When you accidentally type in all-caps or need to make a title but don’t want to rewrite what you already have, this is a little-known quick fix that will save so much time.
Make note-taking in class way easier by selecting “Voice Typing” from the “Tools” menu. Once you click the little microphone icon that appears, anything your computer mic pics up will be put into the doc. It won’t be perfect, but it will be editable, so you can just let it jot down everything your professor says, then revise it later for notes that match up with your lecture.
Check a dictionary within the doc by going to “Tools” in the top menu, then hitting “Dictionary.” You can even highlight a word in the doc and hit Command + Shift + Y to look it up right away. The dictionary appears in the sidebar of the screen, so you don’t need to leave the doc to Google your word. Perhaps best of all, the bottom of the panel shows synonyms that you can swap into your doc to take your vocab up a notch, which is helpful for when you’re writing an essay. (Another dictionary tip: Add any technical terms to your “personal dictionary” so the spell-checker stops flagging them by right clicking the word and adding it. This works great for those of us with weird last names, too.)
Find and replace text in Google Docs by hitting Command + F. The usual search bar will appear in the top right of the window, but if you click the three-dot menu, you’ll get the option of not only “Find,” but “Replace.” If you’ve been misspelling someone’s name over and over throughout an essay or using a word too many times, you can replace it quickly. You even have the option of doing a full “Replace All” or toggling from instance to instance and deciding if you only want to replace a few of them.
Insert a table of contents from the “Insert” menu if you need to keep a long doc organized. This only works if you format the headings on your sections by highlighting them, selecting the “Format” button in the menu, hovering over “Paragraph styles,” then selecting a header option, but it creates a great table of contents that automatically updates. If information you had on page two ends up on page three after you insert a paragraph of text above it, the table of contents will update on its own, so you don’t have to do it manually. You can also click the headers within the table of contents to quickly navigate to that section of the doc.
Find older versions of your doc by hitting “Version history” in the “File” menu. I didn’t know about this for a long time and thought that since Google Docs updates automatically, any revisions I made were permanent. Not so! I’m writing this in Google Docs right now and the software has saved two different versions in the 45 minutes I’ve been at it.
Google Docs hacks for everything else
You can (and definitely do) use Google Docs for more than just writing essays. Here are some of the most convenient things I’ve been able to do with Google Docs, which usually require multiple programs when using other software.
Turn your PDFs into editable text documents by uploading them to your Google Drive, then hitting “Google Docs” in the “Open With…” menu. I didn’t know you could do this until a few months ago, when my Adobe subscription lapsed and I was refusing to pay for it again on principle, since I really only needed to edit one document. There can be some formatting issues when doing this, but for the most part, I’ve found that Google Docs seamlessly turns the PDF into editable text, making it easy to make changes before saving, again, as a PDF.
Sign your documents by adding a “scribble” in Google Docs. I find the extensions for Word too complicated and the online doc editors too expensive, so before I realized you could do this right in Google Docs for free, I was printing out all my sign-able documents, signing them with a pen, and uploading pictures of them wherever they needed to go. Humiliating. To sign within Google Docs, go to “Insert,” then “Drawing,” then “New.” A box will appear for you to draw in. Just go to the menu option that says “Select Line” and hit “Scribble.” Now, scribble your signature in the box, hit save, and you’ll be able to insert it right in the document. Again, this is free.
Add in-text “tasks” to stay on track. This is helpful if you’re working collaboratively with a group or just need to get a massive assignment done on a particular timeline. By typing @task into the doc, you’ll prompt a dialog box that allows you to name the task, delegate it to someone (even yourself), and set a date that it needs to be completed by, so you’ll get reminders. It’s helpful to put a blank page at the beginning or end of your full doc and add all the tasks there. Google Docs puts a little checkbox next to all the tasks, too, so you can tick them off as you go.