Top 10 Google Doc Tips for Productivity (in 2021)

yo john did you make changes to the google docs i was gonna send out what no uh it wasn't me really because according to version history you deleted my bullet point and replaced it with a dirty joke you you you can see who made changes to your google docs hi friends welcome back to the channel if you're new here my name is jeff and while about practical career and productivity tips serve your current student or working professional consider subscribing for more actionable content today we're going to go over 10 super relevant tips for google docs that will no doubt improve your efficiency when using this powerful tool google doc productivity tip number one check who made changes to your document using version history if someone made changes to your shared doc you can go to file version history and see version history to see who is trying to ruin your career after punishing that individual you can simply choose the version you want to revert back to and click restore this version pro tip if you're really paranoid you can actually go back go to file version history name current version to save a snapshot of your current file before john messed it up and click save next time if you go to version history you can actually see the named version pop up in all seriousness there might be times where you yourself want to make big changes to your google doc but not sure if that's the direction you want to take so in situations like that you want to save a named version so you can refer back to it and revert back to it if need be all right i highly recommend you open up a new google doc and follow along for these next two tips because they're a set it and forget it sort of thing tip number two change your default font within google docs if i open up a new google document the default font is ariel very boring if you ask me just like the 2017 version of the justice league movie if i wanted to upgrade to this snyder's cut version and let's say use the verdana font i'll simply first highlight this entire line go to format paragraph styles normal text and update normal text to match then i'll go to format paragraph styles options and save as my default styles now this has been saved you can open up a new tab doc.new how many of you remember that shortcut for my other video comment down below if you did and your default font now is verdana productivity tip number three for google docs auto replace text you set this up by first going to tools preferences substitutions and here you can actually type in abbreviations or acronyms you tend to use a lot and the sentence and or phrase you want to replace it with for example i can be just a tiny bit impatient at work sometimes but in order to protect my image whenever i type this is stupid it will automatically replace it with let's take this offline with a smiley face in all seriousness there are two scenarios where i might use this feature number one i tend to use a lot of acronyms at work that confuse cross-functional teams and newer team members for example please input the po number here today po stands for purchase order so i will replace the most common ones with the full word or phrase or number two if i find myself typing out the url or a link to a website again and again for example a common question i get is oh my god jeff your daily agenda notion template is so cool where can i get it in which case i'll simply type in jeff notion and the full url pops up if you're enjoying the video so far please smash that like button and if not you're probably worried about being caught by the version history feature little known google doc hack number four change capitalization with one simple step this is an easy one if you wanted to format a line of text very quickly and change it to all uppercase lowercase or title case you go to format text capitalization and make the corresponding choice when i start taking notes during a meeting i usually don't have time to format it right then and there so i mainly use the uppercase function to capitalize the headers of my notes afterwards to make sure it looks good google doc productivity tip and trick number five visualize your ideas using drawings within the document itself so i'm a product marketer and sometimes we work with creative agencies to come up with marketing assets we use to promote a campaign or event if i'm pressed for time but i still want to share an initial concept with my teammates or event agency i will go to insert drawing new and literally start to design a very rough draft of an event flyer for example let's say i want the background to be here in blue let's say that's fine and then i actually want the title of the event to be up here let's change that to like gray or something and then insert insert title right there move this up a little bit and i want the speaker headshots to be right here let's change this to purple just make it stand out right here okay and then maybe a little bit call to action action a button down here all right as you can see there's a reason why i'm in marketing i'm a creative genius all jokes aside this is an extremely rough draft that i just want my teammates initial feedback on and i didn't want to spend too much time on another tool and having to send them a link or something this is all done within the same google doc google doc sneaky feature number six keep viewers of your document anonymous so you know how you can see who else is viewing your document in the top right corner here if for whatever reason you want to share the document with multiple people but you don't want to let them know who else is viewing it internal transfer resumes what you can do is you can change the edit word in the url here with the word preview and send this link over now when the other party clicks this link they will only see a preview of the document with no option to copy share and most importantly they don't know who else is looking at the same document on a similar note google doc productivity tip number seven is forcing others to make a copy of your document so you know how we change we just now change the edit word to preview in the url now we've changed that again to copy and you send that link over whoever has a link will not only be able to make a copy of your document directly this is very useful if you created an amazing template for something and you don't want other people messing it up or having to click that make a copy button each time so i know this is part of a google doc video but this feature works for google slides and google sheets as well and as a bonus for all you amazing viewers this is a template of my workout routine tracker i follow something called the push pull leg ppl routine that's not important but i'll link this down below and you should be able to make a copy directly oh and by the way for tips six and seven make sure you have the view only sharing option enabled with the other people first before sending them the link google doc hack number eight is also the last of these link sharing tips which is if you wanted someone to download your document directly in pdf format again before sharing the link change the last word in the url to export question mark format equals pdf and now when someone else opens this link they will download a pdf copy of the document immediately this could save you a lot of time if your goal is to send an email with your google doc as a pdf attachment to your teammate or manager or something the manual dumb way would be to save your google doc as a pdf write the email attach the pdf risk forgetting to attach it and send the email whereas the smarter way would be simply to change the last couple of words in the url hyperlink it within the email so when the other person clicks the link the download would start automatically speaking of user friendliness google doc productivity tip number nine is to send an email with the google document embedded within the email itself let's say you need your manager to review the final draft of your google document to minimize friction you can go to file email email this file send yourself a copy and type in the email of that person directly and include a custom message hi please review and make sure to check don't attach include content in the email and press send and this is how it looks within the email as you can see the viewer doesn't have to click a link they don't have to download anything they can just see everything in the email itself quick and simple and finally google doc productivity tip number 10 especially made for lazy people like myself and that is to use pre-made templates if you want a painless way to create a new document based on a specific need you can actually just go to uh file new from template and choose one of many many default templates google has already generated for us this has definitely saved me tons of time that would have been otherwise spent on formatting uh changing the fonts adjusting the color schemes so why not just start off with a pre-populated template please let me know down in the comments below if there's a cool google doc trick that you use i did not mention or which one of these tips is your favorite see you on the next video and in the meantime have a great one you

Channel: Jeff Su

Views: 38,302

Keywords: Top 10 Google Doc Tips for Productivity (in 2021), google docs for productivity, be productive with google docs, google docs for work, google docs, gdocs, google docs offline, how to use google docs, google docs tutorial, google docs for students, google docs for professionals, productivity, productivity at work

Id: UDJkGkzTUYw

Length: 9min 23sec (563 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 06 2021