Know the ways of Google Docs

At Animas High School we use Google Apps such as Google Docs on a daily basis and
being familiar with its workings can make life much easier. This article will help students who
may be new to AHS or who are unfamiliar with Google Apps by sharing some tips and tricks.
To start off we like to use Google Docs because of its flexibility. What I mean by
flexibility is that Google Docs or Docs is a free element that is provided through Google's
email service. Allowing you to use their online platform, for anyone to use it from any place.
This helps break the boundaries of needing certain programs and not being able to see some files
over others. They also took the boundaries and stretched them even further with allowing you to
open and save documents for other programs.
Google Docs is useful because of its flexibility. Its a free element provided through
Googles email service, GMail, allowing you to use their online platform so that users can access
it from any place and on any device. This helps to break the boundaries of needing certain
programs to view certain files. Even more helpful, Docs allows you to open and save documents
for other programs. Basic write-ups, work documents, and even advanced contracts can be
written, edited, and formatted using Google Docs.
To begin with you first need to be able to get to Google Docs, you can do this three ways.
The first way to get to Docs is by using the menu in gmail, starting in gmail you will navigate to
the rubix cube menu. Then clicking it you will have a menu full of Google's apps, here you
have two of the options to get to Docs. One being the Drive button or the second being the Docs
button. For this first one we can use the Docs button to navigate to the Docs Home Page. If
you don't see any of the described in the menu, you may need to scroll down in the menu. Now

on the Docs Home page you are greeted with a page that has a banner with templates for you to
use and underneath there is space where all your documents that you have made will be showed.
There are several ways to access Google Docs and its functions. Using the menu in
GMails uppermost right hand corner, you can navigate to Googles Rubix Cube menu where
you can either access Docs via your Google Drive or through the Docs button itself. The Docs
home page will display a number of templates for various types of documents along the top of
the screen, and any documents youve produced or had shared with you as you scroll down the
page. If youre accessing Google Docs through your Google Drive, use the Rubix Cube menu
you can find the Drive link to get to the main storage area for your documents and other files.
After coming to the Drive you can look for the NEW button located around the upper to left of
the page. Click this button and choose Google Docs, then you will be taken to a new document
that's ready to go. If neither of those is your preference, simply run a web search for Google
Docs.
Now that we have a document started, we can get into the functions and usages of
Google Docs. As you might have noticed there's a few more things at the top then just the blank
document. These items are menus and buttons that help you to make your document more
creative and appealing. As well as providing access to important functions.
To help you here are descriptions of these menus and buttons
This is the button displayed at the top left that
will allow you to get back to the Docs home
page.

This is the name of your document. It's

displayed right next to the Docs button in the
upper left. Clicking this will allow you to
change the name of your document. Changing
the name here will change its name
everywhere else.
Menus
These two images show the menus that you
would find under the name of your document.
The first one shows the names for each of the
menus. The second shows what it looks like to

open one of the menus.

Menus house many helpful tools that can help
you to improve your document and allow you
to do things such as downloading or print your
documents.
Each tool in the menu bar is a drop down
menu that houses functions and tools. For
example, Insert houses functions that would
allow you to insert tables, images, and
comments.

The Gray Toolbar

Located under the menus is a bar that runs from the far left to the right side of the page.
Starting from the left, you can find these four
buttons and a menu. In the lineup we have; the
Print button that allows you to print your
document, the Undo and Redo buttons that
help you when you make a mistake, and the
paint format button which allows you to copy
the format of one text and apply it to another.
To use this you have to highlight the text you
want to copy the format of, press the button,
and then click the word or highlight the text
you want to apply it to.
Finally the 100% shown here is to change
ther view of the document, Allowing you to
zoom in or out for reading comfort.
These two buttons are the Insert link and Add
Comment buttons. The link button allows you
to add a link to websites in your text. This
could be used to add websites that you used as

a resource or for other helpful content for your

document. To use this, you must copy the
URL of the page you wish to add, then in your
document, highlight text you want to link it to
and press the button. Although if you want to
add just a full website's URL you can paste the
URL and then press the spacebar after it and it
will convert to a link.
For the Comment button you can either
highlight a piece of text and press the button,
or you can press the button and it will
highlight the last word. This is good for
making notes for others or yourself.
Here are four buttons and another menu.
These are primarily for aligning your text.
These change your text from being on the left
margin going to the right, centering it, going
from right margin to left and finally going
from the left side and spacing your words
accordingly to how many words there are.
The rightmost icon in the menu is for
adjusting your spacing in between lines. The
bigger the number, the more it spaces out.
A brief overview of what this section of the
tool bar does is that it has all the text editing in
it. From choosing style of text, font, size and
to styling your text further with Bolding,
Italics, and underlining your text. Finally on
the right you can color your text either by the
characters or by their background .
This second image is showing how to change
the colors, it shows the background menu
because there's an extra button that is useful,
that being the none button. This allows you to
not highlight your text with a color, useful
when copying from a place that the texts
background is color.

These menus and three buttons are here for

organization. The menus are for numbered
lists or bullet point list. Each menu allows you
to customize the lists.
The two buttons that are by each other are to
decrease or increase an indent
Finally the button to the right is the clear
formatting button. This takes out every change
made to a part of text and puts it back to its
original state.
This menu is to switch your view of the
document. It allows for you to switch from
editing to committing to viewing.
The button to the far left of the toolbar allows
you to hide everything other then the toolbar.
Above the toolbar to the right, there's the
comments and share button.
The comments button allows you to see all
comments that have been made on the
document in one central drop down menu.
The share button allows you to give the
document to other people that can either view
comment and suggest or to be an editor on the
document with you.
Advance:
If you hover your mouse over a button without clicking it, a pop up will appear,
explaining the buttons function and the keyboard shortcut for that button. This also can be found
in the menus, opening one and looking to the side of the menu you can see the keyboard
shortcuts there.
Downloading is easy, to download a document you just need to go to File then down to
Download as and choose the format that works for you.
One last thing is that you do not need to save your work to come back to it, Google Drive
automatically saves changes as their made.
Sharing and Commenting

Sharing in Google Docs is a great feature that allows you to do some great collaboration.
The way that sharing work is first
you send an invitation to a person
who you want to look at the
document. The step to do this is
pressing the big blue Share button,
then there will be a pop up menu (to
the right) that allows you to add a
person or multiple people. Next to
where you put in the names there's a
menu that allows you to choose
what privilege that person has to the document. Going to the Advanced button which is in the
lower right corner of the menu. Allows you to see who the document has been shared with and it
also allows you to see the privileges that they have. There you can change privilege to give more
or take it away. The three privileges are: Editing- allowing you to make changes to the document
freely, Commenting/Suggesting- allows you to make edits for the owner and to add notes to
certain parts or areas for the owner of the document, and finally there's Viewing- this makes it to
where the user can only see the document but can not do anything else to it.
Something you will have to know is that if
you're publishing to a website or something
you will have to change the access to either
the web, specific people and more. This can
be found in the advance options in sharing.

Helpful tip for sharing

Using the See Revisions window helps a lot
when you are working with multiple people on a
document. The revisions window helps you to see all
changes that were made by you and others. To get to
the Revision window you need to go to File, then look
for See Revision History. After that then you can
click Show more detailed revisions to see a more
detailed list of edits.
With sharing also comes comments, the comments are useful for others to communicate
suggestions and more to you and other editors. The way that you can do this is by highlighting

text and pressing the comment button and writing your comment. Do know that with
commenting you can also have suggestions, these are in document edits that aren't permanent
unless the owner accepts them.
Formatting
Formatting is something you will make decisions about but some helpful tools are things
like Tables and the text alignment tools. (third set of buttons that we talked about in the gray
toolbar.) There are a lot more because everything makes a slight adjustment to your writing. The
key is to find what works for you and what works for your document.
Publishing
To publish your document on a website I suggest looking at an instructional document
made by an Animas High School teacher, Dan Thurber explains how to publish to weebly. Find
that document here
Although if you use Wordpress I suggest looking at the Wordpress website for the way to put
your document on that website platform. Find their page here
A lot of information and learning was presented in this document about a very useful tool that
Animas High School uses. Overall this document aims to try to help and inform users about
Googles Docs useful, powerful and flexible features. I've linked citations below that give a
more in-depth look at functions and features of Google Docs that can be very helpful.

This is the Google Docs help center that is provided from Google themselves, it's helpful with
simple instructions.
--, Google --. "Welcome to the Google Docs Editors Help Center." Docs Editors Help. Google,
--. Web. 17 Oct. 2016.
Forbes gives some fun and helpful tips that you can use yourself for your own work.
Porges, Seth. "11 Hidden Tips, Tricks, And Hacks For Making The Most Of Google Docs (And
Also Sheets And Slides)." Forbes. Forbes Magazine, --. Web. 17 Oct. 2016.
How to Geek gives a few more ideas for you to use.
Na. "10 Tips and Tricks for Google Docs." HowTo Geek. HowTo Geek, n.d. Web. 17 Oct. 2016.
Again here's the two places you can go to see how to put Docs on a website.
NA. "Google Docs." Support. Wordpress, 02 June 2016. Web. 17 Oct. 2016.
HURBER, Dan. "Embedding Google Docs in Weebly." Embedding Google Docs in Weebly.
T
Dan, 2016. Web. 17 Oct. 2016.
Image citations
Google Inc. Google Dos. Digital image. N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Nov. 2016.