Friday, January 7, 2022

Google's Universal @ Menu for Google Docs

Friday, January 7, 2022

Have you noticed when you open a new google doc that you now see "Type @ to insert"?  Many of you have probably already figured out what this does, but others, like myself, might have thought, "how annoying!"  However, this seemingly annoying little autogenerated "smart chip" actually has some pretty cool functionality for certain situations.

The universal @ menu allows you to take some shortcuts to adding information to your doc.  For example:  If you start by typing @today, it will give you the option to automatically insert the date.  It will do the same for @tomorrow, @yesterday, or @date for choosing a specific date.  Maybe you have a list of names at a meeting and you want to include them at the top of the document.  If you simply type @[and start typing a desired name], a list of people will start to populate that you can select.

This also works for things like inserting a table using @table or @list giving you the options of a numbered, bulleted, or checklist.  Again, are you creating that meeting agenda and you want to bring in meeting notes from a previous meeting? You could type @meeting notes and it will search your calendar for those meeting dates and notes that were taken. If you know your document tag types, @doc or @pdf will search your drive for things saved in those formats.

As with everything, there are pros and cons to using these functions.  First, remember that google docs are designed to be digital collaborative documents.  Therefore, lots of the above mentioned functions import as interactive and have functionality when you hover your mouse over them.  However, you will notice that when you import some of that information it will look different--like text in a bubble.  The downfall comes when you want to print a hard copy of the document, it will print exactly like you see it.  You will want to be careful that your purpose for the document is to remain digital vs printed, or at least that your intended audience will not mind the "bubble-like" appearance of some attributes on the page.

Here are a couple articles from Google on how these items work: