Auto-generated summaries in Google Docs!? Let’s talk about it…
Several blog posts ago, I shared about adding summaries to your Google Docs—you do that in the left-side menu where the document outline is. Those summaries also show up in other locations, like in Google Drive.
What I did not share (or realize) at that point, was for some of you those summaries will be auto-generated, at least if the document is long enough. Yup, you did all of the work on the doc itself, why should you have to do all of the work on the summary as well? You’ll find what Google calls a “suggested summary” in that same location and you can then edit them if you’d like!
Here’s an example of what that looks like in your Google Docs workspace:
The announcement says that these are available to Education Plus users but not Education Fundamentals users.
Now, you might be thinking, “Jake, aren’t there 4 education account types!? What about Education Standard and Education Teaching & Learning users?” Well, dear reader, I have no stinking idea. Because does Google make their communication about their accounts clear? NOPE. There are now more than a dozen account types, when you count non-eduation ones, and some updates clearly list whether they apply to all of them or not, while this one only lists some of the account types.
So, help me out, if you know what kind of Google Workspace for Education account you have – Plus, Fundamentals, Standard, or Teaching & Learning Upgrade – I’d love to hear if you get summary suggestions. And if you work for Google, I’d love for you to tell someone to make your account level and feature availability messaging clearer.
Seriously, just add a chart, the same chart every time, with checkmarks or X’s to each announcement. This account type has it, this one does not. Sheesh. Is it really that difficult?
[Image Source: https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2022/02/new-smart-canvas-features-in-google-docs.html ]
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