Google Docs tips you should know

Google Docs is convenient, cheap (or free), and compatible with just about any platform, making collaboration incredibly simple. And although it has made great strides, it is also infuriating, incomplete, and limited.

Plus, with Google Docs now enabling voice typing, Google Docs is becoming an even more valuable tool for startups and businesses alike. 

To make your overall editing experience a bit better, we offer some tips on how to get the most from Google Docs.

Here are some Google Docs tips everyone should know...

Google Docs tips: View plain text files

If you prefer to use plain desktop text editors such as Emacs, Gedit, Notepad, or Vim, you may find that files created in those apps won't display in Google Docs. Before you upload a plain text file to Google Docs, right-click the file and select rename, and then add the .txt filename extension to the end. Now you'll have no problem reading your document in Google Docs. 

Sidestep problems with big images

In Google Docs you can insert almost any image into a new text document just by dragging and dropping the file from your desktop into your document (as long as you are using a recent version of a major browser such as Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, or Safari). But Google Docs can't deal with any image that is bigger than 2000 pixels wide or 2000 pixels tall.

Google says that this is a known issue, and that it is working to address the problem. In the meantime, use a desktop photo editor to change the size of your photo to less than 2000 pixels. Just make sure to save the resized photo as a new image; otherwise, you'll shrink the original.

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