Google announced a couple of new features for Google documents today. One allows you to click a button to free up some more visual space, and the other lets you take quick actions from a search box.
“Ever wanted more room to get stuff done in Google documents?” writes Google software Amav Shah on the Google Drive blog. “Click the new button in the upper right corner of your screen to enter Compact Mode, and everything above the formatting menu will collapse and give you another inch or so to work with.”
Here’s what that looks like:
Google will remember the view settings you’ve selected for documents, spreadsheets, presentations and drawings. The next time you open them, it should begin in the same view.
“You can also now quickly take menu actions by typing in the new search box,” says Shah. “For example, if you type in ‘Picture,’ you’ll see different options for adding graphics to your document.”
From the search box, you can format text (bold/italics/strikethrough), change the font or font size, insert images, links or comments, make a bulleted or numbered list, open the sharing settings, look up the word count, and do almost anything else from the document menus.
The box does not support language settings, inserting tables, changing text/background color, the paint format tool, or copy/paste using the web clipboard.