How to Use Google Docs

For the SRL Novel Writing courses (both online and in-house) we will use Google docs as a means to privately share our work with the instructor and the other students in the class. Below are instructions on how to use Google docs. If you don’t have a Google account, go to Google.com and create a free account, which takes only seconds.

1. Open the Google Docs website — drive.google.com. When the Google login page appears, simply enter your user ID and password.

2. Create your first document by clicking the “Create” button on the upper left corner of the page, then clicking “Document” from the drop-down menu. A new blank document will appear.

3. Writing on Google docs is a lot like using Microsoft Word. My advice is to create your material using your own Word application offline and then simply paste and save it into a Google doc. In Google docs, you will see pretty much the same task bars as you see while working on Microsoft Word; you’ll see buttons for fonts, bold, italics, underlining, indents, alignment, cutting, copying, pasting, and so on.

4. To save your document, click on the “File” button and choose “Rename” in the drop-down menu. You will be prompted for a file name. Enter a file name and click “OK,” and you’re done.

5. Share your document with your classmates by:

• Click on the button to the left of your document title.
• Then click on the “More” button located above your list of documents. A drop-down menu will appear.
• Click “Share” from the drop-down menu.
• A page will open with a field where you can “invite” contacts to share your document. This is where you paste the emails of your classmates. The email addresses of your classmates (and instructor) will be available to you on the first day of class. 

6. Allow your classmates to view and your instructor to comment: Once you have invited your classmates and instructor, their contact info will immediately appear on your contact list. Through the “can edit” button located to the right of each contact, select “Can View” from that list for each of your classmates. For your instructor, select “Can Comment.”

Click here for another tutorial on the same subject.

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