Are you under-utilizing Google Docs?

Google docs is a free web-based service provided by Google as web applications with similar functionality to office suits. Google docs have made it possible to create, read and edit office documents online even without installing any application. Google docs allow users to work on a document in real-time with other users. So while I can be editing a spreadsheet document in Nigeria, you can be working on same sheet in Hong Kong and another person in New York all at same time making it easy for teams to collaborate on projects.

Google Docs is a suite of online productivity apps such as Document, Presentation, Spreadsheet, Form, and Drawing with option to connect more apps. You can connect apps like Drive notepad, Docusign, CloudConvert, OpenOffice Document Reader, Office, AutoCad 360 etc. there are so many apps to choose from with the Google Drive service.

Google Docs supports the following file formats; Microsoft Word (.DOC and .DOCX), Microsoft Excel (.XLS and .XLSX), Microsoft PowerPoint (.PPT and .PPTX), Adobe Portable Document Format (.PDF), Apple Pages (.PAGES), Adobe Illustrator (.AI), Adobe Photoshop (.PSD), Tagged Image File Format (.TIFF), Autodesk AutoCad (.DXF), Scalable Vector Graphics (.SVG), PostScript (.EPS, .PS), Fonts (.TTF, .OTF), XML Paper Specification (.XPS), Archive file types (.ZIP and .RAR).

Users can upload and edit/read any of the mentioned formats to their Google Drive account even without installing any Office application on their PC. Google Docs was made possible by cloud computing and just like other cloud computing document-sharing services, it requires you to upload documents online or create a new one.

It is not necessarily true that Google Docs can be useful for students and institutions alone, businesses, webmaster and even bloggers like me can find these apps very useful. Google Docs does not require any software installations, the only thing needed to use these apps are web browsers. Google Docs is compatible with web browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox , Safari and Google Chrome. Google Docs also requires you to have a Gmail account.

But often times we under-utilize these apps, so many people do not even know it existed or even how to use it. Google Docs is an incredible tool for everyone who uses the internet whether you are a student, a blogger, a business man etc. There is a good chance you are not using Google Docs to its full capacity so I intend to share with you some of the things you can do with Google Docs.

What you can do with Google Docs:

Preview Documents online: With Google Docs you can preview your documents before opening or even downloading them to your PC.

Create/Edit Documents: You can create a document quickly online or even edit an existing one without having to install or use any traditional application. As a blogger I use this a lot, I create quick documents online with Google Docs and save important information so I do not have to carry them around. And the best part is that I can have access to them even from another PC or Tablet.

Create PDFs Online: This is the easiest method for me to create PDF files online even without an application.

Create Forms: I also find Google Docs useful in creating online forms, so while making a research you can use Google Docs to gather your research information, ask for opinions using Google forms. Using Google forms I can also monitor my blog uptime/downtime just like I explained in this article titled “How to Monitor Blog Downtime”.

Create Graphs: Google Docs can also help you create graphs, visuals are great tools for getting your point across. This is possible with Google Spreadsheets.

Create Presentations: Google Slides allows you to create and edit presentations online even without installing any application. You can even embed images and videos in such presentations.

Document Revisioning: Google Docs can help you keep track of changes that have been made on a document over the course of its lifespan. This can help you jump front and back between edits you have made over time, that way you do not need to lose anything ever in a document.

Publish to your Blog: You can publish a document from Google Docs to your blog by just clicking “Share > Publish as Web Page” in any document. Next click “Set your blog site settings” and enter your login details. You can publish to Blogger, LiveJournal, SquareSpace and others.

Document Syncing: Google Docs allows you to sync your documents with Microsoft Office using tools like Syncplicity or Google Cloud Connect, so any time you make changes on any document on your PC, the changes will be reflected on the one you have on your Google Drive and vise versa.

Collaborate on a Project: Teachers and students can use Google Docs to collaborate and work on a project no matter their distance or time differences.

There are countless number of things one can use Google Docs for, take a look at the Google Docs template Gallery to see different types of templates and what you can achieve with Google Docs so you don’t have to underuse it again. Google Docs can be very useful to you, make good use of it and improve your productivity.

Have you ever used Google Docs in the past? What exactly did you use it for? Mind sharing with me using the comment below? Remember to subscribe to my RSS feed.