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An Introduction to Google Docs

Hey! Welcome to this week’s tip of the week. In these weekly posts we highlight some tips and tricks that we use at Translation Excellence on a daily basis. If you’ve missed some of our previous posts, you can check them out here.

This week I’m going to give an introduction to Google Docs, a free office suite by Google. First off, to get Google Docs all you need is a Google Gmail account (also free). The goal of this post is to give you a general overview of how to create documents and what some of my favorite basic features are.

Once you’re signed up, there are a couple of ways to access Google Docs.

  1. Type the following URL in your browser: drive.google.com
  2. Click on the button next to your email address in Gmail (See screenshot below) and then click on “Drive.”

Now, take a look at the left side of the screen. You should see a header that says “Drive,” and then a navigation bar like this:

 

This is where all the magic happens. By clicking on “Create” you can create folders, documents, presentations, spreadsheets, forms, or drawings. Click on “Connect more apps” at the bottom and you can add hundreds of more apps to the dropdown menu.

 

All these might look pretty familiar to you… Does the Microsoft Office suite ring any bells?

While Google Docs isn’t quite as powerful as Microsoft Office, many of the functionalities are the same (and even some of the shortcut keys). One of the key differentiators between the two suites is the ability to share documents with friends, family, and colleagues within Google Docs.

Let’s look into this a little more.

Here, I have an empty “Document” that I just created; it looks a lot like Word right?

 

We’ll start by renaming the document by clicking “Untitled document” in the upper left hand corner and then filling out the new name:

 

 

 

Then, we can write whatever we want. Without going into too much detail, here’s a screenshot of some of the things that you can do with a “Document” in Google Docs:

 

Pretty cool right? And we haven’t even gotten to my favorite part, the collaborative nature of Google Docs!

In the upper right-hand corner, under your email address, is a little button labeled “Share.”

Click on it and you can share the document with anyone you’d like via email.

You can even send a message to the person you’re sharing the document with (this one’s being shared with our company president, Nisar) and notify them that you’ve shared a document with them.

See? Now we both have access to the document.

What’s so great about Google Docs is that anyone can edit any document at any time. Unlike some servers, where only one person can have the document open at once, with Google Docs everyone can have the document open at the same time!

You can also start chat threads:

And you can all add comments:

Do you see the green and pink marks on the document? The pink one is Nisar’s cursor and the green one is mine! You can even watch the person typing in the document live.

Pretty cool stuff. We’ve found Google Docs to be an enormous help for so many of our day-to-day things. For example, we have a spreadsheet dedicated to interesting industry-related articles that everyone in the office adds to. We then read these articles, share them on social media, or use them to come up with blog ideas (which we then put into our Google Doc for blog ideas).

We also use the spreadsheets in Google Docs for numerous other things such as employee timesheets, terminology glossaries, and PO numbers.

Have you used Google Docs before? What do you think of it and what do you use it for? Let us know in the comments below!

Nisar_Nikzad

NISAR NIKZAD

Nisar, the dynamic force behind Translation Excellence, stands tall as its founder and CEO. This isn’t just any company—it’s a global heavyweight in boutique language services. Hailing from the vibrant city of Kabul, Afghanistan, Nisar brought his passion and expertise to the U.S. shores in 2001. In the realm of languages, he’s a titan. With 19 years under his belt, he’s worn hats from a linguist and instructor to a cultural bridge-builder and curriculum craftsman.

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