Google Docs: New Features

 Edit Suggestions for Collaborators Feature

When students are collaborating on a group project or you want to easily track a student's revision changes, this is a great new feature in Google Docs.

At the keynote presentation for Google I/O 2014, Google announced a new feature called Suggested Edits for Google Docs. There was several other updates that came to Google Drive, but this one may have been the most exciting for Docs users.

The lack of redline editing in Docs has been a major issue for many users, especially those attempting the switch from Microsoft. Also known as tracked changes, redline editing is one of the best ways to collaborate while also making sure that all changes are accounted for. With Suggested Edits, users have access to a very similar feature, making it even easier to get off of Word.

Merge Cells in a Table

Working with tables in Google Docs has always been a little frustrating, with not much flexibility in the settings. I normally prefer to copy and paste cells from a Google Sheet, but a recent update will cut that step out completely. It was a highly requested feature and now you can finally merge table cells in Google Docs.

The Image above shows a pretty impressive way of taking advantage of merging cells in Google Docs, but it’s actually really easy to do. All you need to do is highlight the cells you’d like to merge, right click inside the selected cells and select Merge cells. You can also select Merge cells from the Table drop-down in the menu at the top of your screen.