Split Cells in Google Docs Tables

If you’re like me, you can hack Google Docs to do almost everything that it should do, but doesn’t do.

That includes – or, did include – making a table that has a variable number of cells in each row. 

Let’s say you have a rubric where most rows require just 2 options – 0 points or 1 point – and then you have a row where you need three options – 2, 1, or 0 points. Well, in the past, the hack was to make each row have 3 columns for those options, but in all of the 1 point rows, merge them together.  It worked, but it certainly wasn’t elegant.

Well, now we don’t need that hack – You can now split table cells into any number of rows and columns.

1 cell in a table can have multiple rows and columns. This works for the example that I gave, but you can likely find a ton of other reasons you might use this! Maybe you need subheadings underneath your headings… you need to add units into a table… or you need to add some information with an asterisk. Now you can.  Just right-click the cell > click Split cell > enter the number of rows and columns you want > and click Split. Voila! 

This is available in all Google accounts, even free ones.

[GIF Source: https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2022/10/split-table-cells-in-google-docs.html ]

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Auto-Generated Summaries in Google Docs!

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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Insert emojis inline with text in Google Docs!

“@:mind blown”🤯! “@:thinking face”🤔!

Am I speaking a new top secret language? No, I’m talking about the new capability to insert emojis in your Google Docs without clicking around in any menus or using any Chrome Extensions.

Built into the Smart Chip menu (that they released a year ago) is the ability to add emojis now! If you type, for example, the “@” symbol and brain you’ll be able to get to the brain emoji from within that smart chip menu and then you’ll be able to select the brain emoji. 🧠

How to add emojis inline in Google Docs

Unfortunately, you’ll have to sift through some other results like Google Drive files and Google Maps locations that also  involve the word brain. To make it quicker, follow that @ symbol up with a colon :.

That tells the Smart Chips menu to just look at emojis.  When you do that you’ll see matching emoji results, and you can click “enter” to accept the one at the top of the list. If you type a word in that has multiple results, like smile or heart, you may have to use the arrow keys or mouse to get to the one you want. You can also click on the right arrow in the top right of the smart chips pane to see the full menu of emojis to search or scroll through.

It won’t enhance your pedagogy but it might make you a little more efficient, or make your docs—and your students’ docs, a little more fun. I’m here for each of those things!

This update is available to ALL Google users and is out now. 

[GIF Source: https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2022/08/inline-emoji-insertion-Docs.html ]

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Adding Summaries to your Google Docs…

Wait, what’s this Google Doc for?

Earlier this year, Google added the ability to type up your own Summary for your doc in the left sidebar where the doc outline appears.

The outline is autogenerated by your use of headings, titles, subtitles, and other items in your doc, but the summary is something that you type in manually. 

There doesn’t appear to be a limit to how long it can be, but you’re unable to do any formatting within it. You can use Shift+Enter to add line breaks though.

This summary will appear in that left sidebar for all viewers and it also shows up in other places, like the details pane that you can see in Google Docs. That’s a nice way to tell people what the doc is before they open it.

[Image Source: https://www.howtogeek.com/789838/how-to-add-a-document-summary-in-google-docs/ ]

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Get Notified of Edits to a Google Doc

Need to know as soon as someone adds something to the meeting agenda? Eagerly awaiting a student starting their first draft of an overdue paper? Want to keep a watchful eye on a super important doc? Well, Google has a new feature that can help you!

You can now choose to be notified via email if a file is edited.

And it’s on a per-file basis, meaning you can have this setting on for your staff luncheon list, but off for your assessment schedule doc.

The email that you receive will tell you the what, when, and who, of any changes that were made. You can set them from within the doc by clicking Tools, then Notification Settings. Or you can access it by clicking the comments button in the top right and then the bell.  Once you’re in there you can choose to be notified of all comments, no comments, or just comments that tag you.

And, the major new feature, you can choose to be notified about added or removed content. You’ll also see these same options in your Gmail when you receive a notification about a doc, including the ones that we’ve been receiving for years about comments.  Now there’s a notification dropdown with these additional settings.

This is available on ALL Google accounts now!

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Making Multiple Text Selections in Google Docs

I just used Google Docs to write a blog post referencing my book, Educational Duct Tape, and while proofreading it I noticed I totally forgot to italicize the book title each time I referenced it. I could fix one of them and use the paint format tool to apply that fix to all of them . . . or I could fix one of them, copy it, and then paste it in place of the other ones or . . .

💡I could use the new multiple-text selection option in Google Docs.

📺 Check this out in video form on TikTokInstagram Reels, or YouTube Shorts. 📺

You can now highlight a set of text–or double-click a single word–and then hold down control (or command on a Mac) while highlighting other text or double-clicking other words, and they’ll all be selected!

I can now use this to select multiple instances of the phrase Educational Duct Tape and make them all italicized!  You can also do this to delete multiple chunks of text at once or even copy them. 

The copy option is weird because it just copies those words and then you paste just those words. It’s interesting.

You can also use it with pasting.  For example, suppose I want to add the book’s subtitle – An EdTech Integration Mindset – each time the title is referenced. In that case, I can copy the full title with the subtitle, select all instances of the title, and click paste, and it’ll paste it in each place! Pretty cool stuff.

This feature should be active in all Google accounts at this point. 

📺 Check this out in video form on TikTokInstagram Reels, or YouTube Shorts. 📺

[GIF Source: https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2022/05/multiple-text-selections-in-google-docs.html]

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Comment with Emojis in Google Docs

📣 Guess what’s here? Emoji Reactions in Google Docs!

📺  Check this out in video form on TikTokInstagram Reels, or YouTube Shorts. 📺 

Smiley face! Face with open mouth! Thinking face! Face with tears of joy! Pile of poo! We all love emojis and now we can use them in lieu of comments in Google Docs.

Now if you highlight some text you’ll see 3 options on the right side of the screen: add comment, add emoji reaction, and suggested edits. Other people who have editing or commenting access can then click on the same emoji to upvote (now it’ll show the same emoji with a 2 next to it) or they can highlight the text and add a different emoji.

How to add emoji reaction in Google Docs as Comments

You can add multiple emojis to the same spot as well.  If you click an emoji reaction that you’ve already added, it’ll make that reaction go away, or if there is more than one of it, it’ll reduce the number by one. When you hover the cursor over them, you can see who the emojis are from. They can also be resolved just like comments. These emojis also appear in the comments menu in the top right corner, near the share button.

Emoji reactions are just like comments – they can only be added or viewed if you have editing or commenting access. People who are only viewers will neither see the emoji reactions nor be able to add reactions of their own. 

I love that Google made it possible to add ANY emoji, not just a handful, like thumbs up or smiley faces. Plus, when appropriate, there are different skin tones and gender options, including gender-neutral emoji.

(This update is available in ALL Google accounts including free ones.)

📺  Check this out in video form on TikTokInstagram Reels, or YouTube Shorts. 📺 

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Google adds Dropdown Menus and New Smart Chips to Google Docs!

OMG you can have dropdown menus in Google Docs now—and that’s just the tip of the iceberg!

📺 Check it out in video form on TikTokInstagram Reels, or YouTube Shorts. 📺 

These additions primarily relate to the Google Docs smart chips menu that pops up when you type in an “@” symbol. Well, it now features a boatload of goodies. Many of them are just quick access to things we already had access to within the regular toolbar menus, but some surprises popped up recently.

Let’s run through all of the stuff that’s in there— 

  • People – tag people in your doc
  • Building blocks – insert templates that Google provides for things like meeting notes and email drafts
  • Files – add links to Google Drive files
  • Checklists, numbered lists, and bulleted lists
  • Images, drawings, and charts
  • Dates – easily jump to your calendar
  • Text formatting selections – normal text, heading, title, etc.
  • Calendar events
  • Page components like page numbers, page counts, headers, footers, page breaks, and watermarks—by the way, it’s crazy easy to add watermarks to Google docs now, have you tried it?
  • A table, plus some slick table templates that Google provides
  • Horizontal line, table of contents, bookmarks, footnotes, equations, special characters, and links.

Most of that is not that big of news, and almost all of it can be accessed from one of the normal menus at the top of the screen.

The big one is the last option in that “@” menu, which I left out in that list— Dropdowns!

You can select one of their pre-made dropdown sets or, the big news for teachers, you can make your own set

You can put in as many options as you want (at least as far as I can tell—I added 30 in my test).

You add the text and then select the color for each option. If this is a dropdown you’ll use regularly, you can even save it to use in the future! Plus if you copy the dropdown, you can then paste it elsewhere with the same options! It’s really rad.

Dropdown is also in the Insert menu at the top of the screen, so you can get to it from there too. 

There are lots of potential applications in the classroom from multiple choice questions, to a work feedback cycle, to the management of student-paced or personalized learning setups, and more!

These dropdowns and the smart chips are available to ALL GOOGLE USERS.

📺 Check it out in video form on TikTokInstagram Reels, or YouTube Shorts. 📺 

[GIF Source: https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2022/05/table-templates-and-dropdown-chips-for-google-docs.html ]

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Google is letting us go pageless in Google Docs…

📺 Check this out in video form on TikTok, Instagram Reels, or YouTube Shorts. 📺

If we only print a fraction of the Google Docs we create, why are our docs formatted for 8.5” by 11” paper, when our computer screens are not 8.5” by 11”!?

Well, Google finally realized this and offered up a pageless documents setting

Just go to File > Page Setup and select Pagelesss to start! You’ll notice that your page looks pretty much the same except for the boundary around the page disappearing. 

Sure, page breaks will disappear as will headers, footers, and footnotes, but the width of your text will still fit a typical piece of paper.

You’ll now want to click on View > Text Width and select a different text. Then, when you change the normal zoom option that you see in the toolbar, it’ll make your text larger without zooming in to the page itself.  The real benefit is being able to make tables and images as wide as you’d like.  I think this feature has some room to grow, but I’m really glad to see it added!

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8+ Tools for Developing Learner Profiles

Mike Mohammad joined me in episode 28 of the Educational Duct Tape Podcast to discuss 2 questions that an educator might have.  One of the topics that we discussed was learner profiles.  Mike posed the question, “How can students create a profile of themselves as a learner to share with an audience beyond the classroom?

Tools for Learner Profiles Title Image

While Mike and I did not discuss the it during the show, I want to quickly compare and contrast the terms learner profile and digital portfolio.  While there are similarities (both are typically curated by the student, both showcase the students work in school and both are often done digitally) there are also some differences (typically, digital portfolios are a showcase of academic work and growth while learner profiles also often focus on the students’ capabilities, characteristics and aptitudes as a learner).

Regardless of which end result you’re looking to cultivate in your school (learner profile, digital portfolio or a blend of both), there are plenty of tools that you can leverage.

A week after the episode in which Mike and I discusssed this aired, I hosted a Twitter chat about the questions from our talk.

Here are some of the participants’ responses to the question about learner profiles:

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