Tech Tool Spotlight: Google Docs Creation Links

Tech Tool Spotlight: Google Docs Creation Links

by: Isaac Wisti

The Google Drive suite is a wonderful tool that we use in this district, but it can be a little bit of a hassle to create a new document. You have to go into Google Drive, find the folder you want your document to be in, then you have to click new, and finally click document. This process takes an average of about 20 seconds, and takes even more if you are an extremely organized person that uses a lot of folders. Fortunately, there is an alternative route: you can create a bookmark.

By using a bookmark, you don’t have to enter Google Drive at all, saving you over 15 seconds every single time. This is useful to both students and teachers alike. Not only do you save time, but it is just feels better, at least in my opinion, to click one button rather than go through a 4 step process in order to make a new document.

To get it set up is just a couple simple steps.

First, right click your bookmarks bar and click “Add Page” as shown in the image (similarly, if you are using Firefox hit “New Bookmark”)

A menu will pop up, it will ask you to enter a name and link. You can put whatever name you want to in the first box, I recommend the name “New Doc.” The second box must be the following without the parenthesis, (docs.google.com/document/create). You can then click the save button, and you’re done!

This process also works for presentations, spreadsheets, forms, and drawings, you just have to replace the word “document” with the corresponding word.

There are two issues with doing this, however both have solutions. The first is that when you create a document this way, it will be in your main Google Drive folder, not organized at all. The fix for this is to use another feature that allows you to move a document to a folder from within a document.

The other issue is that these bookmarks can take up a lot of space on your bar, this is fixed simply by putting them in folder on your bookmarks bar.

Hopefully you found this as useful as I did, and it will save you some time and hassle.

Original article: http://www.pcworld.com/article/3005797/software-productivity/5-cool-google-drive-features-you-probably-arent-using-yet.html

List of things to replace document (in the link) with:

• spreadsheets
• presentation
• form
• drawing