There are a huge number of tools at your disposal if you’re using Google Workspace as your primary business software.
We’ve taken some of our most common customer Google Workspace queries and used them to create a snapshot of our favourite time-saving tips and tricks.
Don't waste time with the same spell checks
Google Docs flags up spellings for you, but how annoying is it when the same industry-specific words you use in nearly every document get continually flagged as misspellings?
Put an end to the time you waste running a spell check and having to click through a number of erroneous suggestions.
Simply add the words you frequently use into your personal dictionary.
Go to Tools > Spelling and grammar > Personal dictionary and enter your favourite business jargon. Just make sure you spell it correctly! 😉
Using stars in Gmail
Organising your multitude of emails can get tiring and time-consuming. The obvious way of tackling the problem is to to arrange important emails using default labels but that can get unproductive in the long run.
Using stars and “important” markers in Gmail can be incredibly useful for improving the organisation of your inbox. Give them a try if you haven’t already!
Save your tabs
Wondering why Google Chrome browser is slow and may even freeze after a while? Chances are, you have dozens of tabs open.
More often than not, restarting is the solution. But that doesn’t mean you have to lose all the pages you have open. Instead of closing the browser, open up a new tab and type chrome://restart in the navigation bar. Hit enter to reset the program, then when Chrome reopens, all your tabs will be right where you left them.
Using Google Keep for more organised notes
Don’t forget you can use Google Keep to create notes and lists to stay organised using checkboxes and colour-coding or simply by doodling your notes.
You can event use Google Keep to add reminders to your tasks.
You can event use Google Keep to add reminders to your tasks.
Simply, add a note then click on the little bell icon. From there, you can choose between Date & Time, or Place.
Share files for a meeting
See your Files Sorted by Size
By default, Google Drive sorts uploaded files and folders by the “Latest Modified First” rule. This means that the files you uploaded most recently are easily accessible at the top of your folder view.
But what about when you’re running low on available space on your Google Drive account and you want to sort the files by their size to figure out where you can save space the most?
To do this get Google Drive to arrange files by size using the two steps below:
Step 1: On the Google Drive homepage, hover your mouse on the “Upgrade storage” option at the bottom of the left panel.
Step 2: This will bring up a window with the breakdown of your usage. Click on “Drive“, and Google Drive will sort all your files by size.
Better engage with your presentation audiences using the Google Slides Q&A tool
Looking for a way to make a good presentation on Google Slides even better? Check out the Google Slides Q&A feature that allows you to accept questions as you present.
It provides an exciting tool to help you connect with your audience in new, creative ways when presenting, and is especially helpful for managing the Q&A in live webinars.
You can activate the Q&A feature in Google Slides when you’re using Presenter View. You’ll find it in the Audience Tools section.
Once activated, your audience will see a URL on your slides that they can click to type questions for you to answer.
Clone Formatting Easily in Two Clicks
Add captions to Google Meet
If you are having trouble following what is being said in your Google Meet videoconference, you can turn on closed captions. (Note that if you record a meeting, captions won’t appear when playing back the recording.)
To enable captions, click the Turn On Captions button [CC], which can be found on the lower-right side of the Meet window. On mobile, the captions option should appear once you tap on the More icon (which looks like a vertical set of three dots).
From the pop-up menu that appears, select Turn On Captions.
Although it won’t capture everything perfectly, this tool does provide you with a quick and easy way to take notes and start off a document or even to transcribe an audio file for free.
Extend Gmail's "Undo Send" time
Ever felt that the “Undo send” pop-up box in Gmail has disappeared too soon? Need a few more seconds to process it and be able to stop an email going out that you just pressed “Send” on?
To choose the amount of time (from 5 – 30 seconds) that your Gmail setup allows for you to unsend a message, change the settings by following these steps:
- On your computer, go to Gmail.
- In the top right, click Settings See all settings.
- Next to “Undo Send,” select a Send cancellation period of 5, 10, 20, or 30 seconds.
- At the bottom, click Save changes.
Maximise on voice to text
The voice to text function is one that we love at Debouge Tech – as our previous post on how to boost your productivity by talking to your computer proves.
To have a go at using it, select Tools > Voice typing to launch the tool and then start talking.
Be sure to enunciate and say formatting commands (like “full stop”, “new paragraph”, etc.
Although it won’t capture everything perfectly, this tool does provide you with a quick and easy way to take notes and start off a document or even to transcribe an audio file for free.
Keep Google Chrome up-to-date and as secure as it can be
This is a simple tip but a really important one that a lot of people often neglect.
Normally updates happen in the background when you close and reopen your computer’s browser but if you haven’t closed your browser in a while, you might see a pending update.
Keep an eye out when you have Chrome open.
Look to the top right-hand corner of your Chrome window, where the three dots (“More”) usually appear.
If an update is pending, the icon will be coloured:
- Green: An update was released less than 2 days ago.
- Orange: An update was released about 4 days ago.
- Red: An update was released at least a week ago.
We recommend applying the Chrome Update ASAP by clicking on the “Update” button.
Share files for a meeting
Did you know that you can attach a document from Drive or your computer to an event/meeting request in Google Calendar?
Simply go to the paperclip icon, find the attachment, and save. With that, anyone you share the event with automatically gets access to documents you’ve attached.
Lock specific cells to prevent unwanted changes
Get a daily agenda email
Do you like to start your day with an overview of your meetings and tasks for the day?
Yes – then get your daily agenda sent straight to your Gmail inbox.
After enabling the feature, Google Calendar sends you an email with your agenda at 5 a.m. every single day of the week so that you can digest your Google Calendar one day at a time.
Save to Google Drive via Chrome extension
Google recently added a browser extension for Chrome called Save to Google Drive. Add this to your browser, and you can easily save files, images, links, and more from the web straight to Drive. All you have to do is right-click on the object you want to save and select the Save to Google Drive option.
How to see all your Google Meet attendees
A Google Meet videoconferencing event can have up to 250 people on the call but only 16 on view on your screen at a time.
The number of participants you can view depends on the layout you choose in your settings.
Simply click the three-dot menu and select the Change layout option to choose your layout style – Sidebar, Spotlight or Tiled.
Sign your documents
Need to add a signature to your documents but don’t want to export to an e-sign software signing PDF tool that costs you money?
Simply scribble out a signature in seconds within Google Docs.
Just click Insert > Drawing to bring up the artwork editor. Then, select Scribble from the drop-down menu and drag out a digital version of your signature.
Done once, you can then re-use this signature for all your future documents.