Tips and Tricks for Google Documents

Google Documents is rapidly gaining thousands of new users for its simple--and free--approach to the world of word processing. If you're just starting to use the software, and you're not ridiculously computer savvy, here are a few tips and tricks to help you use Google Documents to its full potential.

How To Format Documents for Use in Word

You might have noticed that Google Documents can't be cut and pasted into Microsoft's Word--the formatting gets all screwed up, along with the font, size of the letters, and a lot of other stuff. That's because that functionality wasn't built in to either program, but luckily Google foresaw possible issues and offered a workaround--instead of copying, go to "File" and choose "export as Word." This will preserve your formatting and save the document in a Word format--however, if you want the document to be saved in the newest Word 2007 format, you'll have to open the exported file in Word 2007 and save it again. Google currently only supports the earlier version of the Word format, since it's far more common.

Getting a Word Count

The word count feature in Google Documents is located in the "file" drop down menu. You might notice that your word counts are slightly different in Google Documents than in Word--this is because Google is a bit more lenient on what constitutes a separate word. Most schools and jobs will go by what Word says, so be sure to export your document using the tip above to check your final word count in Microsoft Word before submitting any important documents or papers for review.

How To Share a Document and Track Revisions

One of the most useful features of Google Documents is the ability to share a document with multiple users, letting them change (or just view) your files. For group projects, this can be a fantastic way to collaborate--to share a document, simply click on the "Share" button in the upper right hand corner of a Google document. You can elect to give the people you email access to the document, and you can even paste the original document into the email you send them--but be sure to let them know whether you want to hear their feedback in the Google Document or in an email.

Once multiple users are working with a document, hit the "Revisions" tab to track all the revisions and roll back unnecessary changes.

Starring Documents
By clicking the star next to a document name in the Google Document folder view, you can highlight that document as important. This can help you prioritize when you've got a lot of projects at a given time. Click on the star at the top of the column to organize all of the documents by whether they have a star or not (starred documents move to the bottom or top of your page).

If you've learned other Google Documents tips and tricks, post them in the comments.