Hidden Google Docs Features to Save Time 📄

It's likely that you're using Google Docs every day for something or other, whether it's creating a document or just reading them.

And there's probably a bunch of features inside Google Docs that you've never touched that would actually help save you some time.

So I'm just going to quickly share a few of my favorites with you this week.

To do that, I've got this document which is a program overview just about an upcoming event.

And you can see it's in the traditional pages format where we all the content is on a page and it spills onto the next page.

But when was the last time that you actually printed something?

Because it was a while ago for me.

Instead, I'm gonna click on format and then choose this option to switch to pageless format.

And that will then just give me this single page that has a lot more space on it, a lot more width, but also just endless height.

There's no breaks between each of the pages, which is also really helpful when you've got tables like this because they won't break halfway across one page, so and onto the next one.

If I scroll further down, you can see I've got a section here for team tasks.

And there is a hidden menu in Google Docs that appears when you type the symbol and it gives you a bunch of different things.

They're often called smart chips or building blocks.

And so for smart chips, I can insert dates, dropdown menus, is even a stopwatch, a timer.

But the one I want to focus on now is adding tasks.

So if I choose task, I can actually create a task here, which I might say something like create calendar for the event.

I can even assign it to a person that could be me or someone else on the team.

So I'm gonna choose Tanya here.

And if I want to, I can even set a due date.

So let's choose another date here and then choose Assign as task.

And you see, because this document isn't shared with Tanya yet, I'm getting prompted here to share it with her.

So I'm gonna give her edit access and click Share.

And.

And now that task is here.

I can see that it's assigned to Tanya here and she could just come along and tick that box.

Or I could if I know that it's complete.

If you want to take that further.

there's also an option when you type that symbol, if you scroll down to building blocks, it shows you a few here, but if I click on the arrow, there's actually lots more.

One of them is a task tracker, which is like a nicely formatted table where you can put a bunch of tasks in a table and they can all be added into Google Tasks for people to.

To tick off as well.

And if I scroll back to the top of the page, one thing we often do is add an executive summary in here.

But if the information changes, you might need to make some changes to this as you go.

Or if I just type that symbol below that as an example and start typing AI Summary, you'll see I have a building block for AI Summary, and it will use Gemini to go and write a summary of this document that can be added to the top of the page, and you can easily then insert that, get it updated, and so on.

There's the summary here.

I click the tick to accept the changes, and now that's on my document right at the top and I can click on the refresh button.

And that might mean that then you could delete that executive summary that you already have.

And talking of using Gemini, the last thing I'll show you today is the Gemini menu at the top of the screen.

Obviously you've got things like where you can create new text and add new text, but you've also got the option to listen to this tab and if you click on there, it will open up a player on the bottom left of the screen here, where the tab will actually be read out to you.

and if you want other people to do that as well, you could actually just insert a button to do that by going to the insert menu, going to audio buttons, and choosing Listen to tab.

That button will appear wherever you want to put it on the dock for other people to play it as well.

I hope that was helpful and I'll see you in the next one.