Ravi Shankar

Tweaking Apps

Google Docs

Auto Replace feature in Google Docs

By Leave a Comment

This tutorial talks about the Auto Replace feature available in Google Docs. Using this feature, Google Docs users can add abbreviation and their corresponding words. For example, if you want to the entry da to be replaced with digianswers then you can do the following

Click the Tools menu and select Preferences from the displayed menu list.

In the Preferences Window, make sure to mark the check box with label as Automatic substitution.

And type “da” in Replace text box and the corresponding entry “digitalanswers” in With text box. Click OK button which is available at the bottom of the Preferences window to save the changes. Now when you type “da” in the document, it would be replaced with “digitalanswers”

Always Keep headings visible in Google Spreadsheet

By 1 Comment

When you are working with lot of data in a Spreadsheet, the headings would disappear when you start scrolling down the rows. Google Docs Spreadsheet provides users with the option for keeping the headings always visible even when you scroll down the Sheet. This can be done by using the menu option available as part of the View menu. To explain, let us take the take following sample data

Now when the users scroll down below Row no 26, the heading rows would disappear as shown below.

And it will be difficult for the users to find out the column under which the values fall. This problem can be addressed using the Freeze rows feature. Navigate to View menu then Freeze rows and select Freeze 1 row menu option.

This would always Keep the heading rows always visible in a Google Docs Spreadsheet.

How to enable autocomplete in Google Docs Spreadsheet

By 5 Comments

Autocomplete feature helps users by automatically filling the content of cell when users starting entering the first couple of letters in the Cell. The automatic entry is picked from the previously entered values for the same column.

Let us say you have got the following list of entries in one of the column

Arizona
Alabama
California
Florida
Indiana

Now when you start typing Ar in the cell below Indiana, Spreadsheet will automatically display Arizona based on the entries done earlier for that column. And when you press enter this value will be automatically filled for that cell.

You can enable Autocomplete feature in Google Spreadsheet by clicking the Tools menu and selecting Enable AutoComplete from list of available menus.

Remember that if there is a empty cell before the active cell then Autocomplete feature will try to pick from the below column values.

Turn off auto detect links in Google Docs

By Leave a Comment

Hyperlinks

Google Docs has a feature that can automatically detect any links and apply the style accordingly. For example if you have type a text as http://digianswers.com in a Google Docs document then it would consider this as a hyperlink

image

But if you do not want the hyperlink then highlight the link and click on the remove link.

image

And if you want to permanently turn off the auto detection of links then click on the Tools menu and select Preferences from the list of available menus.

image 

In the Preferences window, un mark the check box with label as Automatically detect links and click on the Ok button available at the bottom of the preferences window.

image

How to find word count in Google Docs Document

By Leave a Comment

Word Count

Word count in a Google Docs document can be found using the menu option available as part of Tools menu. The Word Count window provides count of pages, Words, Characters (no spaces), Characters (with spaces).

If you want find the Word Count in document, click on the Tools menu and then select Word count from the list of available menus.

image

This would display the Word Count window with the following information.

image

You can also find count of words for the given selection and the result will be displayed under the Selection column.