Category: Google Docs

In their continuing effort to AI all the things, Google announced at Google Cloud Next yesterday that grammar suggestions will be rolling out to Google Docs in the near future.  The Mountain View company has already opened up the Early Adopters Program signup for those who are on G Suite and want to give it a try.

The feature works as you would expect and is similar to other tools provided by other apps, most notably Microsoft Word in Office 365.  When you have a word or phrase that grammatically needs to be improved, it will be underlined in blue.  You can then click on it and get the suggestion for improvement and either accept it or reject it.

Earlier this year, Google began rolling out a Quick Access panel in Google Docs to a limited scope of G Suite customers.  Functioning similar to the Quick Access panel in Google Drive, except being located in the Explorer button, Docs uses artificial intelligence to to show relevant files in the Explorer button of Docs based on your Google Drive activity and information in your document.  Now Google is rolling it out to all G Suite customers.

While the feature is still rolling out, once you have it, you will have a richer experience on the Explorer button in Google Docs with this new relevant information.  This will allow you to reference other files more quickly but also get information from those files to put into your current Docs.

Google’s continuing efforts to improve menus within the G Suite apps has brought a new update once again to users.  This is the fourth month in a row that one of the G Suite apps has had a menu update with this month’s efforts focusing on Google Docs and Google Slides

Functionally across all of these changes, Google hasn’t changed much.  Rather, this is an effort to more clearly define what a feature does and, in some case, move the feature to another menu within Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides where it makes more sense to have it.  The updates to Docs and Slides are along those lines.

A new Activity Dashboard has started rolling out to G Suite domains that allows admins and users to see when shared files have been viewed by others.  The idea behind the dashboard is to improve collaboration by letting users know when someone who is working with them on a file has actually viewed that file.  Think of it as read receipts for files.

The new feature works for Google Docs, Sheets and Slides files and the feature will be rolling out in two phases.  First, admins will have the ability to enable or disable the feature starting today and only they can see the Activity Dashboard.

For the third month in a row, Google has begun rolling out menu tweaks to some of the G Suite apps today.  The update that is rolling out today impacts Google Docs and Google Sheets online and will be coming to all G Suite customers over the course of the next week or two.

Like the updates from last month, these tweaks are aimed at making navigation within Google Docs and Google Sheets easier by clarifying what a function does.  These are all visual changes and not changes in function.

Over the past few months, Google has been making minor tweaks to the menus in various G Suite apps online.  Most of these efforts, with the biggest change coming last month, have been aimed at making it easier to navigate these menus and to be clear about what exactly you are doing with that menu option.

Today another round of menu tweaks started rolling out to all G Suite customers that further adjusts menus in Google Docs and Google Slides.  In their announcement, Google laid out the before and after menu views to help users find the difference.

For Google Docs, to add a line or page break, here are the changes:

• Before: Insert > Page break or Column break
• After: Insert > Break > Page break or Column break