Google Docs has a lot of great features, but in some cases people sometimes need a few things that are not available in Google Docs by default.
You can include a number of Google Doc add-ons that expand the base of functionality available in Google Docs. Below are the top ten.
Selection Tool
When you’re editing a document or collaborating in any other way, the ability to highlight text is invaluable.
Google Docs has a default highlighting method. To do this, you need to highlight the text you want to highlight, select the highlight icon on the ribbon, and choose the highlight color you want to use.
This creates a nice selection effect for the selected text. However, this process consists of several steps and the possibilities are limited.
The Highlight Tool Google Doc add-on makes the selection process more functional.
After installing the tool, you will need to follow a few setup steps. To do this, in Google Docs, select “Add-ons” from the menu, select “Selection Tool” and select “Settings.”
Enable automatic scanning of marker sets at startup.
Click the X in the corner to close the window. Finally, launch the Selection Tool by choosing Add-ons from the menu, select Selection Tool and choose Start.
This will launch the selection tool.
To start a selection, simply select the text you want to highlight with any color and select the selection library in the selection tool window.
In the first window, select New Set. Give the set a name and apply the appropriate color. Give the color a label if you like. When you’re done, click Save.
As you create sets of selection colors, they will be displayed in the selection tool window on the right side of the screen.
The idea is that you can quickly select the text you want to highlight and choose any of the selection color sets you create. This will highlight the selected text with this color.
The idea is that you can create a large collection of as many lighting colors as you like. You can then quickly highlight the selected text in any of these colors by simply clicking on any set of colors in this window.
This speeds up the selection process and makes it much easier.
Code Blocks
Another great addition to Google Doc is Code Blocks
If you often need to document code, one of the best ways to do this is to use a word processor that can handle and format specific languages ??of the code.
By default, Google Docs doesn’t handle code formatting very well. Blocks of code need to be formatted manually, choosing different types of fonts, adding a background color, etc. But why does this all work when you can use an add-on to do it all for you?
After installing the Code Blocks add-on, you can access it by going to the Add-ons menu, choosing Code Blocks and then choosing Start.
This will open a new window on the right where you can select the code language and formatting theme you want to use.
Now all you have to do is paste your code into your document, select the entire code block, and then click the Format button in the Code Blocks window.
This creates beautifully formatted code embedded in your google doc.
This addon supports an impressive set of languages ??and includes a good set of great code formatting themes.
Fillable Document
Very often, Google Docs is used to create form templates that other people can fill out. Unfortunately, Google Docs lacks good features to make it easy to create fillable documents.
Fortunately, there is a Google Doc add-on called Fillable Document that allows you to do this.
Like other add-ons, after installation you need to select it in the “Add-ons” menu item and select “Start”.
The first time you launch the add-in, you will need to select Start customization to get started. In step 1, you will need to select the spreadsheet in which you want to save the data from the completed form.
You can create a new spreadsheet or choose from an existing one. Click “Next†to continue. In the second step, you must select or create a destination folder.
In the last step, you will need to create an email template to send the fillable form to the recipients. This step is optional.
After completing the customization, you can use the fillable document window on the right to create all the fields for the fillable document. Just select the + sign next to the list of fields. You can also select Create New Field. You can then insert these fields into your document by clicking the Insert Field icon.
These fields appear within the document with placeholders preceded by the $ symbol.
You can see the web version of the form by selecting “Open Web Form” in the fill out document window.
When you’re done creating your form, simply select Publish Form. Select the Share tab to provide a list of email addresses for submitting the fillable form.
Select “Publish Form” to complete and send out emails.
Mail Merge
The Mail Merge Add-in is a powerful Google Doc add-on that lets you take values ??from a Google Sheets spreadsheet and insert them into your document template.
How is this useful? If you are considering a business where the owner needs to send invoices to hundreds of customers, this add-on will allow them to create a “template†of a master invoice, but fill in specific fields using data rows from a spreadsheet.
This creates as many invoice documents as necessary to process all of the data from the original spreadsheet. To use this add-on, simply select “Merge” from the “Add-ons” menu and select “Start”.
The merge window will open on the right.
Use this window to select the spreadsheet containing the data you want to combine. Then you can select each field you want to use to combine with the document template.
You can also select Show Email Settings to customize the email header template if you want to automate sending a batch of documents to multiple users.
If you still want to use the Batch Email feature, be sure to set the add-in’s SMTP options to use the correct SMTP settings for your email account.
Pixabay Free Photos
Another useful addition to Google Doc is Pixabay Free Images This is one of the easiest add-ons to use as it is just a free image search to use in your own document.
To use it, simply select Add-ons from the menu, select Free Pixabay Images and select Search Images.
This will open a window on the right that you can use to find free images to use in your google doc.
Just select a free image to place in your document wherever you are.
Doc Variables
An alternative to the Mail Merge add-in or the Fillable Document add-in is the Doc Variables add-in.
This add-on is ideal if you want multiple people to fill out the document with their values. An add-in is a collaboration form that users can use to enter data into variables that you create in a document.
After installing the add-in, creating a template document is very easy. Simply select Add-Ins from the menu, select Document Variables, select Insert Variable, and select the type of variable you want to embed in your document.
After choosing the type of the variable, just give it a name and choose whether it will be a single field or multiple lines.
Click OK and you will see that the variable appears in the document with a $ sign in front of it.
You can send the document to someone to fill out, and all they have to do is select “Start” from the add-in menu.
A window will open on the right with fields for all the variables you created for the document.
The person you submitted the form to just needs to fill in the variables and hit the blue arrow to finish. This will automatically populate the document with all the information entered by the person.
This is a great way to create a form that is easy to fill out, or just a template document that people can easily fill out by simply completing an additional form.
Text Cleaner
If you edit a lot of documents, the Google Doc Text Cleaner add-on can automate your work.
Installing this add-on gives you access to quick editing from the menu. Just select Add-Ins from the menu, select Cleanup Text and choose any of the quick changes available.
For example, you can do any of the following for the entire document:
- Remove line breaks
- Remove paragraph breaks
- Fix hard line breaks
- Remove some spaces from sentences.
- Remove tabs.
- Correct the smart quotes.
If you need access to additional editing tools, select Customize. A new window will open where you can customize the features of the Text Cleaner
Not only does this screen allow you to customize all the changes it will make for you, but if you select whatever you want and choose “Save and Clear Now,†it will make all the changes at once in the document.
This tool, like all the others listed in this article, extends the capabilities of Google Docs. This makes it much easier to create amazing things with your documents.
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