11 Tips You Should Start Using on Google Docs Today

If you need someone to approve anything you add or revise, turn on "Suggesting" in the top right corner. Anything you add will appear in green and someone can just tap the check mark to approve it. Need to edit directly without approval? Select "Editing" and anything you add, move, or remove will not appear in green.

Instead of sending a follow-up email, simply type + and add someone's email address, and they'll get an email letting them know they need to address something in your document.

At the top right corner, click sharing. There, you can choose who can see your document and if they have viewing, editing, or commenting abilities. If you tap "Advanced" on the bottom right corner, you can see who has access and decide if only you can add more people to see the doc, as well as disable the download, print, and copy feature "for commenters and viewers."

Don't panic if anyone sends you a Microsoft Word document to edit! First, add the Chrome extension called Office Editing For Docs, Sheets, and Slides. After that, you can edit any Microsoft Office document. Once you're done, go to File > Download As > Microsoft Office (.docx) to save it.

If you're traveling but still need to work on a document, just open up the document and start typing. You'll notice a grayed out lightning bolt at the top and that means the document is offline. Any changes you make will be saved offline and you don't need to worry about losing it. Once you're online again, the changes will sync up.

If you tap on your co-worker's photo at the top right corner, you'll see where their cursor is in the document.

If you want to see how much your project has grown or bring an old snippet of what you wrote back, go to File > See Revision History. A sidebar will appear and you'll get to see what was added when and by whom. Click on a certain revision and you'll see an option "Restore revision" to bring it back into your document.

At the top, click on "Add-ons." Here, you'll see a whole collection of different tools you can add and use in Google Docs. Many are extremely useful, like EasyBib, which creates bibliographies easily.

At the top of your Google Doc, go to Help > Keyboard shortcuts or press command and / at the same time to see all the shortcuts available in Google Docs. These will be great to memorize and learn if you need to constantly format your writing in a document.

Need to put something together quickly? Head to the templates section in Google Docs. You can choose from a variety of ready-to-go templates where all you need to do is add in your information and ta-da! You're done.

This is for anyone who finds it easier to brainstorm by speaking aloud or just wants to try this feature. Go to Tools > Voice Typing and start speaking aloud — Google Docs will start typing it out. That's not all you can do; you can also edit your document by saying certain phrases like "Highlight."