Google Docs Intermediate: Smart Canvas, Tables, & Collaboration Tips

[music] >> This is Google Docs for intermediate users, the complete course. In this

video, you're going to learn everything you need to know to take your Google Docs skills to the next level. If you've

already mastered the basics in my beginner's guide, you know how to create, you know how to edit, and how to

share documents. But today, we're going to expand those skills in several ways. You're going to learn how to structure

multi-page documents, how to automate workflows using Google Docs powerful smart canvas, and you're going to learn

some advanced table formatting, some document approvals, and more. This is going to be fun. Let's get started. And

in this first segment of Google Docs for intermediate users, the complete course, we're going to look at some advanced

document architecture and custom styles. And the first example of that that we're going to tackle is dynamic tables of

contents. So, here we have a wonderful document that I'm working on all about my favorite musical genre, but I'd

really like to have a table of contents to go with this. And I want that table of contents to be here at the very top

of my document. So, I placed my cursor at the very top, I tapped enter or return on the keyboard, and then I just

put the cursor exactly where I would like the table of contents to appear. Now, I'm going to go up to the top menu,

I'll click insert, and choose page elements, and then table of contents. Now, I can choose between plain text,

dotted, and links. I'm going to select plain text, and look what I get. Automatically, a table of contents is

produced. Each section of my document is represented here at the top in the table of contents, and it has the

corresponding page number for each of those sections. Now, one of the great things about these tables of contents in

Google Docs is that they are dynamic. So, let's say I decide to add another section to this document. It's going to

be where section eight currently is. So, I'm going to browse down there, and I could do it the hard way and just browse

all the way down to section eight, or look what I could do. I can just click here in the table of contents, select

this link, and it jumps me immediately down to that section of my document. Okay, so I'm going to click right before

the word the, tap enter on the keyboard, and I'll just put number nine right there, and this new section eight is

going to be all about underground synth-pop music. Maybe something like this. Now, I could go on to add some

detail. Okay, so I've added a bit of detail here to section eight. Now, I can browse back up to my table of contents,

and look, my new section eight does not appear. But, as long as I used heading two for my new heading, which I did, I

basically just copied what was already there, so yes, I did use heading two. As long as I've done that, I can

right-click on the table of contents and choose update table of contents, and look, my new section appears, and the

numbering is updated, although I need to change the number for the conclusion. So, table of contents are an example of

advanced document architecture. It's a way for you to design your document in such a way that it's more organized, and

it's got some good structure to it. Next, let's look at how to customize and save default styles in Google Docs.

Let's say I would like to adjust these heading two headings throughout my document. I think they look good, but

let's say I want them a little bit smaller. So, I used the decrease font button to shrink that down just a little

bit. And maybe I want it to be italicized. Also, I would like the color to be neon green. Okay, this is a huge

mistake, but bear with me. Now that I've formatted this heading two the way I want it to be, I'm going to highlight

it. And the easiest, quickest way to highlight a sentence in almost anything is to triple click on it, and the whole

sentence or heading in this case will be highlighted. Now, I'm going to go to the toolbar style. So, I'll click here where

it says heading two. I'll put my mouse over heading two, and notice it says update heading two to match. To match

what? Well, it's going to match whatever I have highlighted. So, I click there. So, now let's browse down and look at

the rest of my document. You can see now every one of my heading two headings, or anything that I've formatted to be

heading two style, it's now in fluorescent green. The font size is a little smaller than it used to be, and

they're all italicized. Now, this change that I've made is only applicable to this document that I'm currently working

on. If I close out of the document, bring it back, and use heading two again, it will be fluorescent green with

the italics. But, let's say I go to my Google Drive account and I click new Google Doc. I'll just make a blank

Google Doc, and I type something out, an important message like this one perhaps. I highlight the text, and I set it to be

heading two. You can see it's not fluorescent green. It's not italicized because this change that I made to

heading two is only applicable to this exact document. Now, what if you want this change that you've made to heading

two to be permanent, not just in this document, but in all future documents? To do this, you would go to styles, you

would go to options, and you would click save as my default styles. At that point, all of the styles that you have

customized will now become the default styles in your Google Docs account. Next, let's look at a couple of

different kinds of breaks that you can add into your Google Docs. We're going to look at page breaks and section

breaks. Let's say in my document, I would like to separate these different sections a little more clearly. So,

maybe at the end of section one, I'd like to insert a break. I just clicked at the end of the section, and then I

can go here to insert break, and I could put in a page break, but I have other options, too. Now, notice there's a

faster way to insert a page break. On a Mac, you can hold the command key and tap enter. On a Windows computer, it's

control enter. So, I'm going to insert the break that way. Command or control enter. And look what it does.

Immediately, it pushes the rest of the document down to the next page. And page breaks are great. I can now backspace

the rest of the content up a little bit so that there's not wasted space, but this is a really good way to separate

sections of your document or chapters, as well. In this case, I'm going to hold command and tap Z a couple of times, or

on a Windows computer, control Z, just to undo the page break. I want you to see a section break and focus on the

difference between those two. So, with the cursor in the exact place it was for the page break, I'm going to click

insert break, but instead of page break, let's try section break. And that seemed to do basically the exact same thing as

the page break. But, there is a difference with this section break. Because I used a section break, my

document now has an independent structural block, this section here, that allows me to change the formatting,

the headers, the footers, and page numbers for specific parts of my document, especially if I keep using

section breaks throughout the rest of the document. I'm going to undo the section break just like I did the page

break, control or command Z a couple of times. Let's try a second kind of section break. If I go to insert, break,

this time instead of section break next page, which is so similar to a page break, I'm going to select section break

continuous. You can see the difference. Continuous looks like almost nothing changed, but it still creates this

independent structure block that gives me formatting options. I can change headers, footers, page numbers a little

easier. So, when you want to add breaks into your documents, just consider, do I just need a simple page break that moves

the rest of the content to the next page, or do I want to create some more complex

independent structural blocks in my document? Now, there's a way we can see what's going on regarding page breaks or

section breaks. We can do this by going to view in the top menu, clicking, and we can select show non-printing

characters. And doing that will visually reveal to us the hidden section breaks in our document. It even tells us what

kind of section break it is. So, that can be very helpful. For now, I'm going to click view and turn off show

non-printing characters. Okay, really quickly, I'm going to add a couple more section breaks. So, I click after

section two, insert, break. Let's do section break continuous, and I'll do one more of those just so you can see a

pattern. Insert, break, section break continuous. And now I'm going to go back up to part of section two. Actually,

it's the end of section two. Right here, this is where the page header for section two could go. So, I'm going to

double-click there and notice it says header section two. Notice that there's an option that says link to previous. In

other words, link to the previous section header. I'm going to uncheck that and now I'm going to enter a

section title. I'll type the story continues. How about that? Now, if I click away from the header, there's my

header title for this section and let's go up to the prior section page, actually pages, and you'll see that

there is not a section header there. So, in other words, by unlinking section two to the previous section, I was able to

put in a different section header title. Let's turn back on link to previous and you'll see what happens. It now is just

copying the previous section header. So, if I type in the story continues again, click away, notice that it's linked to

the prior section header and so all of the pages really have the same header at the top now. So, that's why it can be

very important to unlink to previous. Now, what made that possible to have it unlinked to the previous is because I

had different sections. If I didn't have sections, all of the headers would have to pretty much be the same. Let's look

at another difference we can make in our documents because we're using section breaks. I'm going to click somewhere

here in section two and then I'll go up to the top menu, select file, and page setup, and notice that I can now make a

change and that change will apply to this section, section two. I could say the whole document and that's fine, or I

could say this section onward or forward, but in this case, I only want the change to happen to section two. I'm

going to change the orientation to landscape, but again, only for section two. I click okay and things radically

changed. Why? Because that section is now in landscape orientation. All of the other sections of the document are in

portrait orientation. So again, what makes these changes possible in Google Docs? Using section breaks. It makes it

so that you can apply differences to one section than you do to others. So in this first segment of Google Docs for

intermediate users, the complete course, we've learned about some advanced document architecture and custom styles.

Specifically, creating dynamic tables of contents, customizing and saving styles. We've looked at section breaks and page

breaks, and how we can start to customize some of the headers, and you can also do the same thing with footers

in your documents. In this next segment of Google Docs for intermediate users, the complete course, I'm going to teach

you about the smart canvas and dynamic building blocks that you can use in your Google Docs. Let's start with the smart

canvas. A few years ago, Google Docs added some useful shortcuts that you can use to bring in some additional

functionality into your documents. And the way you access some of these is by typing the @ symbol. Let me give you an

example. Let's say that I reference in this section someone that is involved in the content of this section, or maybe

it's someone that's going to edit the section, whatever it might be. I can hold the shift key and tap the number

two in order to get the @ symbol. When you add the @ symbol into your Google Doc, look what happens. It gives you a

list of some suggested people that you could reference, also some smart chips that we'll look at in a minute, and some

building blocks. These can be very useful. So again, what if I'm just referencing a person? I could select

that person here. I can click here to get even more people, not just the last two that I've referenced, but I'll click

on Adrian here, and it adds a reference to Adrian. Now, if I put my mouse pointer over Adrian's email address, I

get some additional functionality in my doc. I can send Adrian an email message. I could schedule a one-on-one

appointment. Sometimes you can send a video meeting invite or a message. In this case, those are blurred out. I

could click to open a detailed view about Adrian. So, there are some really great options that are now just part of

my Google document. Also, notice here at the right, there's a little pop-up that appeared. It says, "Mentioned people

don't have access to this file." So, by adding a reference to Adrian here, I did not automatically give Adrian access to

this document. It says, "Sharing it will give them access and send them a notification." So, Adrian doesn't know

that I've added a reference here in the document, and Adrian won't know until I go here to the upper right and share the

document specifically with Adrian. I'm going to dismiss that. In addition to referencing people, you can also

reference dates. So, here, I'm going to click. I'll type the at symbol again, but this time, I'm going to select date.

I could choose a specific date in the future or in the past. I'll pick this day. I could even put in a time. Let's

say 1:00 p.m. I could put the time zone in if I want, and then click okay. So, now a specific date and time show up in

my document, and they can be adjusted easily right from within the document. I can adjust the time, the date using this

pop-up. So, again, the at symbol gives us special functionality in the document. Quickly, I want to show you

another item that we can add through the smart chip system. So, shift two to get the at symbol. Check this out. If you

browse down the page, you can add an audio button to your page, and it says listen to this tab. So, from now on, as

long as I leave this button on this page, I can just click >> The electronic canvas, synth-pop as the

definitive post-modern art form one. One, introduction. This >> And this document is being read to me

now using a computer voice. We're going to look at a few other smart chips as we move on through this segment of the

course, but I hope that you'll take the opportunity to explore some of the amazing things you can quickly add by

typing the at symbol in Google Docs. Okay, let's look now at a few other uses of the at menu, and I'm going to browse

down aways, let's say to the end of section two, and let's say I'd like to set this up so that I have a drop-down

list where I can mark my progress in each section of this document. I could start just by typing the at symbol, and

I get the at menu that appears. I'll type in drop-down, and you don't even have to completely finish typing

drop-down. Just start it, and then tap enter on the keyboard, and here I'm going to select new drop-down, and I can

use this wizard that pops up to create a custom drop-down menu. It wants me to name this drop-down menu or template

that I'm creating. I'm going to call this section status. I'm going to make option one be draft, option two under

review, option three reviewed, option four could be ready to publish. Now, I could go on and create other options as

well. You can also delete unneeded options, and then look at this. You can color code the different drop-down

options. So, this is a nice visual cue for you as you work in your document. Maybe this light red for draft, under

review, maybe yellow, reviewed, light green, and then when I'm ready to have it published, I'll switch to dark green.

I think that works well. So, I'll click save, and now as I work in my document, I'll be able to easily see my progress.

Let's say I feel like this is just a rough draft, I'll leave it at draft. When I'm ready for it to be reviewed, I

can switch to under review. Once it's reviewed, I can switch, and then when it's ready to publish, there we go. I

consider this section to be done. Now, check this out. Let's say at the bottom of section three, I would like to also

have my drop down there. I can just type in @ drop down, there it is, and I have some preset drop downs that are similar

to what I just created, and I also have my custom section status drop down that I recently made. So, I can select that,

and without any hassle, I have that same drop down functionality in section three. So, this is a custom drop down

chip is what it's called, a smart chip that I can add to my document using the @ menu, and it's great for these status

tags, but there are so many other uses as well for these drop downs. So, all of these @ menu features, they're

considered to be part of the smart canvas in Google Docs. There's also dynamic building blocks, and these are

all kind of connected, and there are definitely some similarities in how these work, the @ symbol being key to

most of them. So, let's move on and look at a building block that you can use in your documents, and again, it's part of

the smart canvas. So, let's say I decide I need to have a meeting with my publisher about section four. I wish I

had a publisher. And I'll type meeting notes, there it is, I'll select it, and now I can search my calendar for a

meeting that's coming up. You can see here there is a meeting on my Google Calendar, and I can click on that. It

shows the date, what the event or meeting in this case is, and may list attendees. And here, I can start

generating meeting notes for this meeting. Maybe an introduction, discuss layout of the book, marketing, whatever

else there might be. And we can even add a to-do list. Another building block or template that you can access right from

within Google Docs using the @ menu is @ email draft. So again, you just type the @ symbol, start typing email draft, and

it appears here. You can then click. I can put in a person to whom I want to send the email or multiple people. I can

do a carbon copy. I can type in the subject. And then if I want to, I can begin writing the email message. Okay,

something like that. Now, one of the nice things about composing an email draft here in Google Docs is we can use

the collaborative nature of Google Docs to work on this email together. So let's say I have an assistant or a partner

that I want to work with on this email. We can all collaborate and add our thoughts, add our ideas and comments,

and create a really good email draft here. Once we're ready to send this email, we can just click here on the

Gmail symbol. It opens up this message that I've started composing, but it opens up in Gmail as a draft. I can make

any adjustments I want to. I can add files from my Google Drive, and then I can just click send. And all of the hard

work was already done here in Google Docs with the help of my assistant. And I can just click send. So this is

another very useful aspect of the Smart Canvas, the dynamic building blocks that we have in Google Docs. Now, if you have

a Google Workspace account, either through your school or your business, you need to also look into smart chips

variables. You might find them here in insert smart chips and then look for variables. I don't have them here in

this account, but if you have a Google Workspace account through your school or business, you probably have variables

listed here in the menu. With those variables, you can do some exciting things. Like you can name a variable

client name or teacher or faculty member and then you can insert the client name variable throughout your document.

Later, once you realize who the client name is or which teacher you're writing this document to, you can click on

client name or teacher name or whatever the variable is, put in the specific client name and every other client name

chip in the document will update instantly. So, that's a nice feature to have. I wish I had it in this account.

Instead, I'm going to go in to smart chips, placeholder chips, person. So, placeholder chips aren't quite as

versatile as the variable chips, but I could still put in a placeholder for person throughout the document or maybe

a smart chip placeholder for a file. Maybe I want to share a Google Drive file here at this point in my document,

but I don't know which one quite yet. This will remind me and then later I can click and select the specific file that

I want to share. So, variables and placeholder chips can be very helpful as you work on your documents. In this

segment of the course, we've learned some of the lesser known but very powerful features, tips and tricks that

are part of the smart canvas in Google Docs. If you haven't been using smart chips, you really need to give them a

try. They're so useful and powerful. In this next segment of Google Docs for intermediate users, the complete course,

I'm going to teach you advanced layout, graphics, and tables. And these are some of the most important skills in all of

Google Docs. First, let's take a closer look at tables. So, here in my document, I'm going to browse down to this section

about Howard Jones, and I'll insert a table. I'll just click here and go up to the top menu, click insert table, and

here we have a grid that we can use to choose how many columns and how many rows to start with in our table. Now, I

can change all of this later if I choose to, but to begin, I would like three columns and let's say eight rows. Upon

selecting those options, I get my table inserted exactly where I want it. Now, I can click inside a cell of the table,

and I can type in what I want each column to be about. I'm just tapping tab to move over to the right. So, this is

the table that I'm constructing about Howard Jones and his album and single releases. Give me a minute to finish

this table, and then I'll resume the video. Okay, I've got my table now, and I've done some formatting just by

highlighting different parts of the table and then selecting bold or other formatting options. Now that I have my

table, I'm going to right-click inside any cell, and I'll select table options. When you do this, you get a table

options panel at the right side of the screen. Let's look at some of the important things we can do with the

table options panel. First, notice that the cells have a little bit of padding inside them. In other words, the words

dream into action are not right up to the left line of this cell. There's a little bit of padding. You'll probably

like that, but there are situations in which you would want to adjust the padding. So, I can go here to cell and

change the padding. You can see how it radically changes the look and feel of the table as you adjust cell padding.

Now, in most cases, if you're going to adjust cell padding, you're going to want to click and drag to highlight an

entire column or row and then go in to the cell options in the table options and change the padding for the whole

column or row all at once. So, that's going to look a lot better, more uniform. Let's look at another key

setting in the table options. If you go to row, one of the best options to select, especially if you have a big

table that flows over from one page to the next, is this. You can pin the header row. When you check that box,

look what happens. The header row, album, year released, notable singles, that gets repeated throughout the table.

Anytime the table moves to another page, you get that header row. Now, if you want, you can pin two header rows or

three. In this case, that would be very confusing. It would be a mistake. It would mean that the Humans Lib album and

the Dream Into Action album are repeated on each subsequent page. That's not what I want. So, I'll leave the pin header

rows at just one row. Let's look at one more table option, and that is color. If I select color, I can change the border

color, let's say to fluorescent green or to purple, pink, whatever I want to choose. In addition to that, you can

change the border weight, and you can see what happens when you do that. It really changes the personality of the

table or its look and feel. I'm going to try maybe a dark blue for the color. I think that looks good, and maybe I'll

lower the border thickness or weight to 1.5. I think that looks really good. I could also adjust the cell background

color if I wanted to, maybe go to a light blue, but notice that that only changes the selected cell. So, if you

want to really change the background cell color, you should click and drag to highlight the entire table and then

choose the cell background color. Again, I think that looks pretty good. Now that we've looked at some of the advanced

table formatting and properties, let's look at text wrapping and image masks. I'm going to go up between the Howard

Jones paragraphs and the album table and click and I'll choose insert image upload from computer. And here's an

image that I got from Wikimedia Commons. And so now I have an image of Howard Jones right there in my Google document.

But there are some things about this image that I might want to change including the fact that it fills up an

entire page of my Google document. So, let's look at what I can do. I can click here on the image and when I do so, I

get this little doc. This is called the image formatting doc. And you should find it underneath any selected image in

Google Docs. This image formatting doc is exactly what it sounds like. It empowers me to format or edit this

image. Before I do so, the first edit I want to make is I'm going to shrink the image down a bit just by clicking and

dragging on one of the corners. Now let's look at one of the reasons why we may need this image formatting doc.

Let's say I want to move this picture to another place in my document. I'm trying to click and drag and drop it here at

the right and it just won't go. If I click and drag up, the picture moves up. That's interesting, but it still isn't

exactly what I want. What if I click and drag and drop it down here in the table? Okay, it kind of jumps down there, but

this image isn't reacting to my clicks and drags the way I would like it to. If I go down here to the image formatting

doc, I I click here on this image to get some wrap text options. Right now, the image is being forced in line. So, it's

trying to keep it in line. Instead, I could choose wrap text. And you can see what's happening now. As I drag the

image, first of all, I can drag this image exactly where I want it to be now. But not only that, but the text around

it is wrapping around the image. That wasn't happening before. So, wrap text, great option. If I click back here on

wrap text options, I can switch to break text. And again, I can freely drag this image, but now it's breaking the text.

It's not wrapping it so much. I can go behind text. You can see the result there. That can create an interesting

look, let's say in a magazine or an article of some kind that you're working on. And then we also do have in front of

text. I'm going to jump back to wrap text, and I'll put the image of how Jones exactly where I want it to be with

the exact size I want it to be, maybe right there. And notice that I can adjust the margin buffer. In other

words, the white space between my image and the text that's wrapping around it. Right now, it's an eighth of an inch.

I'll change that to a 16th of an inch or maybe to half an inch. You get to decide how much of a buffer you want around

your image. Now, anytime you're working with an image in Google Docs, you can select the image and then look for this

button here to get image options here at the right. If you don't see this button or the image options panel, another way

to get to it is to go up to format, choose image, and then image options, and you'll get that same panel. Now,

here in the image options panel, we can do all sorts of things, like very precisely resize the image, maybe to

2.15 in width. You can also adjust the angle just a little bit or dramatically if

you'd like. You can change the text wrapping right here in the panel if you don't want to use the image formatting

doc. We also have position options with an XY coordinate system. We can recolor the image and there are adjustments we

can make to the opacity of the image, make it less or more opaque, contrast, brightness, and more. We can also add

alternative text, which can be very important, especially for people that may have trouble seeing the image.

Another important advanced graphic or layout feature that we have in Google Docs is drawings and shapes. So, let's

look at how to embed Google Drawings. If I go up here to insert and choose drawing, I can select an existing Google

drawing that I've made in my account just by selecting from Drive. So, these are Google Drawings I've used in the

past. I can select one of them, click insert. I'm going to insert it unlinked, but you have other options as well. And

that Google Drawing is now part of my document. I'm going to undo that, but let's look at how to add a new Google

Drawing right into our Google Docs account. So, I'll click insert, drawing, new, and this opens a drawing canvas

window that I can use to add shapes right here or callouts or arrows, and I can use these elements to quickly create

a custom diagram, like let's say a Venn diagram, and I can change all aspects of this image or shape that I'm working on.

I can adjust the colors. Basically, I can use my drawing and design skills, such as they are, to create something

interesting, and then I can click save and close, and that diagram or drawing is added right into my document. I don't

know what this has to do with Howard Jones, but there it is. Now, if I choose to edit this later, all I have to do is

double-click on it, and the Google Drawings interface opens up again. Now, if you want to learn more about Google

Drawings, check out my video on that powerful tool that's underused, but is really fantastic. I'm going to save and

close, and then I'll jump back into my document. And I'm going to browse up to the top, like the first page of my

document, because I want to show you how to add multi-column layouts and other features into your text. I'm going to

highlight the part of this first section that refers to OMD, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. It's a synth-pop

band from the '80s, but they are still producing new music today, and it's fantastic. With that chunk of text

selected, I'm going to go up to format, columns, and I'll select the two-column layout. I could choose three-column or

other options, but I'll stick with two-column. You can see the result. I now have a mixture of layouts, the

traditional layout, and then I have a two-column layout. Now, later I could have a three-column layout if I choose.

Now, with my two-column layout selected, I'm going to go up to format, columns, more options, and I'll choose line

between columns. Apply, and you can see the effect. This is really nice, especially for magazine articles,

newsletters, things like that. Okay, the final tip I want to give you in this segment of the course is how to insert a

watermark. If you go here to insert, you can select page elements and choose watermark. And notice there are many

other fantastic options here as well. Page numbers, I think I'll do that. What else can we insert? Specific footers,

headers, footnotes, all sorts of wonderful things. But for now, I'll focus on watermark. After selecting

insert page elements watermark, I get a panel here at the right that I can use to add an image as a watermark. I could

upload that same Howard Jones image and make it a watermark for my entire document. If I'm going to do that, I

might want to go into more image options and drop the brightness or increase it, whatever makes sense. I could change the

opacity, make it even less visible on my document, just so that I can still read the text. So, there are some great

options there for an image watermark. I'm going to undo that just to get rid of the watermark completely because in

some cases you don't want an image watermark, you want a text-based watermark. So, I'll type in the word

synth-pop. I could select a specific font, make it more transparent or less transparent, decide if it goes in front

of the text or behind the text, and then just click done. Now that watermark appears on every page of my document.

So, adding tables and images with formatting and text wrapping, creating and embedding a Google drawing, and

playing around with multi-column layouts and watermarks can really enhance your documents. Maybe just don't go overboard

with them. They may end up being more distracting than anything if you do too much of it or do it too dramatically,

but they can be fan- tastic when used in the right amounts. So, in this segment of the course, we've highlighted all of

those key concepts and I've been able to talk about one of my favorite synth-pop artists, Howard Jones. If you want to

watch some recent live performances by Howard Jones, check out my other YouTube channel, Synth-Pop Reviews. There is

some really fun footage of Howard Jones in concert as well as other synth-pop and new wave bands. In this next segment

of Google Docs for intermediate users, the complete course, we are going to look at some of the most powerful

features of this fantastic tool. And they are the collaboration and review features. This is one of the things that

makes Google Docs fantastic. So, let's say I'm collaborating on this document with another person or a team of people.

They're going to help me fact-check this article. They may add additional content to it. And so, one of the ways that we

can collaborate effectively on this document is, let's say I need to work on this section, the second British

invasion and visual styling. I really would like some help with completing this section. What I could do is simply

click and drag to highlight that section, and then I could go here to the top menu and click insert comment. Now,

there are a couple of other ways to do that. You can see that there is a shortcut combination on Mac computers,

command option M, that also gives me the comment functionality. And you can even just double-click here in the margin to

click here to add a comment. But once you have some text highlighted, and you have the comment functionality here at

the right, and look, you can also click it here once you've highlighted text. But anyway, once you have the comment

box visible, you can simply type at, and then simply type a collaborator's email address. Tap enter, and look, I can now

assign this section to a specific person. When I click assign, she will be notified that she's assigned to work on

this specific section of my document. Now, not only will Bernice, in this case, get this assignment, but it will

be added to her personal Google Tasks list. So, this is fantastic functionality. It's using Google Docs to

make an assignment to a member of a team and add it directly to this person's to-do list in Google Tasks. What a cool

feature. If you're not familiar with Google Tasks, please watch my video on that fantastic tool. Next, let's look at

how to compare documents. Now, this is useful in multiple situations. Let's say you are collaborating with someone and

they decide to create a separate version of the document. Maybe they have a different take entirely on the subject

and they want to reorganize everything and then give it to you as an option. So, that's one scenario when what I'm

going to show next could be helpful. But, another example would be in a classroom. Let's say a teacher makes an

assignment to the students and multiple students turn in very similar work. How could the teacher compare the various

assignments and maybe discover if there's cheating going on. So, those are just a couple of different scenarios for

why you might want to compare documents. So, in addition to this version of this synth-pop article, I have another

version and I can compare the two. I'll just go up here to the top menu and choose tools and compare documents. So,

now I can click on My Drive and choose the comparison document. So, let's say this is the other take on this article.

I could select it, click open, and the differences will be attributed to, in this case, someone else. It's really

just me, but let's say that there is someone else working on this document. I could put their name here. I could

decide to include the comments from the other document if I want to, and then I could just click compare. So, again,

this is useful in a variety of scenarios. I just clicked open and it's going to show what the differences are.

Somebody else added best music ever at the top. Well, that's got a little bit cheesy. Maybe I'll get rid of that, and

so I can click this X to reject that. Somebody else changed the format, the heading style, looks like they deleted

some things, looks like a paragraph was deleted, and so I can look at these differences, I can know who made those

changes, and I can choose to approve them or reject them. So, this is a nice feature to be able to compare two

documents and decide what to keep and what to change. The example I gave earlier of a teacher that is concerned

about cheating or plagiarism among the students, this is a way to kind of flag that. It will show the differences and

the similarities between the documents. Now, having said all of that, one of the best things about Google Docs is that

you don't have to end up with multiple versions of a document. If you're working with a team on a document, why

not just have everyone share editing rights? So, add them here as collaborators on your document, add them

as editors on the document, make sure it says that they can edit, send that to them, and then just collaborate on the

same document. That way you don't have to compare documents. But, there are definitely scenarios when it's good to

know about the tools compare documents feature. Okay, so let's say we are just sharing editing rights with other

people, and maybe I, along with five other people, are going to finish this document. That's great, but how are we

going to agree on things and not just erase each other's work? It's going to be important that we check and utilize

the feature that you'll find here in file, and here it is, version history. Let's say that I am happy with this

document as a first draft. I can go to version history and name the current version, first draft. I just type that

in, click save. Now, we can continue working, and let's say I decide to get rid of a section, I decide to add

another artist or band in the contemporary torchbearers section, and I work on that entry. Now, after a

significant amount of other work, I'm going to go to file, version history, and name this version maybe as second

draft. Click save. If I ever decide, "Okay, I'd like to go back to the first draft," I can click on file, version

history, see version history, and now we have the first draft, the second draft. We also have a list of prior edits, and

I can jump back to those versions of the document as well. So, the version history feature is very important to be

able to go back to a prior version of your document, but this ability to name your versions really can be very

helpful. If you want to focus in just on the named versions and not all these other adjustments that have been made

over time, you can go here where it says all versions and choose named versions. So, this only shows the versions that

are formal versions that you've taken the time to name. I'm going to back out of this second draft, and I want you to

see that you can get to that same version information here in the upper right. If you click on this symbol, it

shows a list of the versions that you have for your document, and specifically the named versions. So, in this segment

of Google Docs for intermediate users, the complete course, we've looked at some powerful collaboration and review

functionality that we have in Google Docs, using comments, using the at symbol, and setting up named versions of

your documents. All of these features, along with the concepts I taught you in Google Docs for beginners, the complete

course, these should all make it much easier to collaborate with others in Google Docs. In this final segment of

Google Docs for intermediate users, the complete course, I will show you some built-in AI functionality and I'll point

you to some power productivity tools. So, let's start with AI integration. Here in my document, I've written, I

think, something pretty good, but I'd like to enhance it. I'd like to add maybe a section about one of my favorite

bands, Thompson Twins, but let's say I'm in a hurry and I'd like to at least get a rough draft of this section just to

put in there and then I can edit it myself later. So, I'm going to go here to the upper right and notice that I

have an ask Gemini symbol. If I click on that, I can ask Gemini to help me write. So, I want Gemini to write a few

paragraphs about the band Thompson Twins. Gemini is collecting information and it's getting ready to write those

paragraphs. Now, I could have been more specific. I could have said something like, "Write those paragraphs to match

the style of the rest of the document." In this case, I'm going to have it rewrite it based on the style of the

rest of the document so that it fits in well with the voice and the style of the document overall. Okay, so it's

rewritten it and it even added the new section right where I wanted it to be. It suggested replacing the font and the

style that I had typed in for Thompson Twins with something that matches the rest of the document. So, I'm pretty

happy with this as a rough draft, so I can click accept and now I have a new section in my document about Thompson

Twins and I can go in and add some detail, change some of the wording if I want to, but at least I have something

to work off of. So, to have Gemini built right in to Google Docs, accessible for me to use, that is very handy. Now,

unfortunately, not everyone will see Ask Gemini in Google Docs. So, here is some information about how you can get that.

In some cases, you may need to pay for it. In other cases, it may be provided by your company or school, and there may

be ways to opt in to Google Gemini. So, check out this webpage if you would like more information about that. Another

power productivity tool that you may want to try is voice typing. And it's voice typing with formatting commands.

To activate this on my Mac, I'm going to hold command, hold shift, and tap S. On a Windows computer, it's control shift

S. And you'll get a pop-up to allow access to your microphone, and you'll get this other pop-up underneath. So, I

will allow this time. Thompson Twins grew in popularity until the late '80s when their popularity began to wane a

bit. Period. Nevertheless, they continued creating excellent music in various forms well into the '90s. Okay,

I need to edit some of that. I'm going to go ahead and click stop, and you can see it captured some of my speech that

wasn't meant to be included in the paragraph, but I can just edit that. So, try activating voice typing, and I want

you to see not just the voice typing, but with formatting commands. So, watch this. Thompson Twins albums include

colon insert table. So, hopefully you noticed there when I asked Google Docs to create a table, it did. It inserted

the table, and now I can go in and type in a list of Thompson Twins albums. And so, voice typing really can be very

powerful. And when you use voice commands, it takes it to another level. Here is a Google Docs help page that

gives you a full list of the voice commands that you can use. You can ask Google Docs to select certain things.

You can ask it to bold, italicize, underline, highlight, et cetera. You can have it edit different aspects of your

document all through your voice. Adding and editing tables, I showed you some of that. Also moving around in your

document. And so, voice typing really is perhaps an underused but very powerful productivity feature in Google Docs. So,

I hope you'll check out the AI features in Ask Gemini and also voice typing in Google Docs. So, in this video, you've

learned many different intermediate level tools and features that we have in Google Docs. Adding these tools and

skills to what you already learned and know from my Google Docs for beginners, the complete course, all of these skills

and information put together should elevate Google Docs into a full productivity hub for you to help you be

much more effective in your work. So, as you reflect back on this course, which of these features will save you the most

time? Which one are you the most eager to implement and use in your own work? Please put your responses in the

comments below the video. And if you haven't already seen my Google Docs for beginners, the complete course, you

really need to go back and watch that. There are several features and tools that even if you've used Google Docs

before, you don't know about these. So, you really should go back and watch that. And I hope you'll also check out

my videos on Google Sheets, Google Slides, and many other Google tools and features. But for now, thanks for

watching this video. I hope you found it to be helpful. If you did, please like, follow, and subscribe. And when you do,

click the bell and you'll be notified when I post another video. If you'd like to support my channel, the best way to

do that is to become a channel member, but you could also click the thanks button below the video. You could

support me through my Patreon account or by buying channel merch, and you'll see information about those options in the

description [music] below the video.