We've been relying on Microsoft Word for years, and now Google Docs is slowly gaining ground. Because? Since you can save files online (in Google's cloud storage) and not just save them on your desktop, you can allow other users to edit documents and even change permissions according to your needs.
Although MS Word with its wide range of built-in tools or add-ons still has its appeal, there are many add-ons with hundreds of tools for Google Docs as well. These tools not only help you finish a document faster, they also help you enhance your documents with graphics, signatures, and even proofread your content and more.
Here is a short list of some of the best Google Slide add-ons that we believe are the most crucial to creating a perfect Google Doc.
This add-on helps you change the visual appearance of your app according to your needs. From setting up your favorite theme to creating custom templates or selecting from the range of widgets, you can do a lot with the add-on.
Features:
- Helps you create a look for the tools in your app using the theme picker (offers "material design" and "simple theme").
- It offers the possibility to style the tools according to your choice by writing your own CSS.
- Enhance your experience when accessing the app from different types of devices by adding an intuitive design that changes the format based on the size of the display.
- It allows you to manually resize the canvas or implement a certain screen resolution and even manage it.
- It helps you style a widget using the theme picker, adjust the style of a particular widget, and more.
In addition, it also allows you to create your own style types and insert styles into instruments from external sources.
Price: free
This dual purpose add-on not only allows you to add snippets of the most commonly used texts to your documents, but also allows you to add your own style and save it using spreadsheets.
Features:
- Save typing time when writing reports, creating legal documents, etc.
- It offers the ability to add smart snippets to the sidebar, automatically format snippets and create folders for the most used snippets.
Furthermore, it also allows you to create your own document styles using the Apply Formatting option.
Price: free
If you're looking to style the footnotes of your Google Docs content, this can be of great help. Google Docs doesn't have an option to style footnotes, and this app makes all of that easy.
Features:
- It allows you to format a single footnote at the beginning in your preferred style.
- Then you need to press the option - Update the footnote style to match from the add-on list while selecting the footnote at the same time.
If you press “Update Footnotes” after you have finished entering all footnotes, the footnotes match.
Price: free
This app makes it easy to code style themes on Google Docs. From C or HTML to JavaScript or Python, it supports a range of coding languages for code authors.
Features:
- It offers support for syntax highlighting, which is the option to highlight the text you want to convert to code block and configure.
- It allows you to choose from a wide range of themes according to your needs.
Best of all, once installed and added to the add-ons list, the app automatically identifies the code, allows you to view the changes before formatting the text, and also allows you to manage the app via the “manage add-ons” option.
Price: free
Google Docs offers a “Clear Formatting” option that removes all formatting and keeps bold, italic or underlined if you wish. This app is designed just for this purpose.
Features:
- It not only deletes formatting from a given area, it also removes any spaces or line breaks.
- It also allows you to insert smart quotes.
In addition, it also allows you to create your own custom tool for clearing formatting. All you have to do is hit the "Configure" option and select the formatting you want to save or delete.
Price: free
This is another very useful add-on that offers a range of thirteen tools with a single click, for every daily task that becomes difficult to do manually. Using this app, you can easily change numbers to words and vice versa, insert highlight in text and delete, classify text and more.
Features:
- It allows you to change the text to uppercase or lowercase, change the first word of a sentence to uppercase, etc.
- It offers the possibility to highlight the text using one of 5 colors or select a specific area of the text to eliminate the highlighted part.
- Option to enlarge or reduce the font size of the selected text portion.
- Quickly scans the text for all cases where numbers have been typed using digits and converts them into words.
Among its other important features are the literacy of documents from A to Z and vice versa, and the option to search for any utilities in the sidebar of the add-on or use the most used tools directly from the Google Docs menu list.
Price: free
When it comes to formatting tables, there aren't many choices Google Docs offers. This add-in serves the same purpose as the usual table designs in Microsoft Word.
Features:
- It offers a wide range of style formats that can be used immediately for your tables.
- Offers the ability to create your own styles for spreadsheets.
- It allows you to make a choice and quickly change it into a formatted grid.
- Ability to create your own formats and implement them in any sheet.
In addition, it allows you to configure all the basic styles like colors, fonts, etc., allows you to edit color ideas created by you and also allows you to remove outdated (created by yourself) templates from the menu.
Price: free
Adding Bibliography to research articles is not an easy task and hence this add-on automates the whole process making it simple for you. Most importantly, it also provides tips on the reliability of the source of the website you are citing.
Features:
- It allows you to add a new quote or manage your ongoing activities.
- It offers the possibility to check for plagiarism and any grammatical errors in the research document.
- It gives you access to a collection of 7000 citation styles that includes APA.
- It allows you to cite any number of sources you want to create a fully formatted, alphabetically sorted and word processor compatible bibliography.
Simply find the book, content or website you want to cite, choose a citation style, and enter it in the bibliography.
Price: free version available; Upgrade for the price of $ 9,95 / month.
Although Google Docs offers its own built-in translator, it is limited to English, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish only. In fact, it only provides definitions for words in the source language. But using this add-on allows you to translate into any language.
Features:
- Interpret word definitions for you via the native speaker translator.
- Facilitates quick interpretation of text from any language or any language you wish.
- It allows you to add the translation to your document.
It offers more vernacular options than its usual built-in translator.
Price: free
This add-on helps you navigate by text, tables, images or headings. Basically, it helps you organize your documents into multiple tabs and then browse the contents using sophisticated search functions.
Features:
- It allows you to open the full table of contents on the right side of the document and use any paragraph at any convenient time.
- Offers the ability to view, browse and find in the list of tables and images within documents.
- Lets you access the Bookmarks tab to jump to any section of the document.
From searching for text and displaying in every context across multiple tabs to automatically launching the tool for those who access Google Docs frequently, it's really a useful add-on to get.
Price: free
As the name suggests, it performs the task of protecting your documents by encrypting all confidential data contained in it, such as passwords, sensitive data, etc. Encrypt all confidential data using AES encryption ensuring your data is not stored anywhere.
Features:
- It allows you to add confidential information in the highlighted form.
- It offers the ability to hide the existing selection, allows you to modify confidential data, reveal confidential data and reveal chosen secrets.
- Monitor your navigator through the sidebar where it also shows the real secret.
- It helps you to delete secrets by deleting them from the document.
- Option to move secrets using cut and paste and clear sidebar if there is no activity for 5 minutes.
It also allows you to share documents and collaborate with teams, enables client-side AES encryption, and saves all encrypted data within the document.
Price: free
This is yet another free Google Docs add-on that is most useful when you simply want someone to read your document to you. This way, it saves you time while comfortably listening to your documents read in the background.
Features:
- A robotic sound reads the document to you in the background.
- It offers an in-depth understanding of reading time.
- It helps you fine-tune your speaking skills.
Above all, this text-to-speech app is especially useful for people with low vision. However, it can be just as useful for someone who wants to keep stress out of sight for some time.
Price: free
Charts, charts and diagrams are a requirement for many important documents and this add-on helps you with just that. Also available a Goggle Doc add-on, this app makes charting easy.
Features:
- Once you're done drawing the diagram from a document, Google Doc sends it to the app to complete the diagram.
- It allows you to add graphics from the sidebar of the app.
- Much easier than other similar add-ons.
Overall, it helps you make your document professional using its expertise in creating diagrams and workflows, without a hitch.
Price: free
This add-on offers a perfect way to create, edit and share your concepts on the web. Better known as a mind mapping application, it converts any bulleted list item in your document into a brainstorm map with a single click. Then it is automatically inserted into the document.
Features:
- The generated concept map will include all the details contained in the list.
- Makes the first point the main topic of the brainstorming map.
- The remaining points of the starting level become the topics that diverge from the midpoint.
- The rest of the points become the secondary argument spreading from their original arguments.
Overall, it offers a faster way to view lists and insert a graphical summary into files and information.
Price: free
Page layout tool
This is another great free Google Docs add-on that helps you define the page layout. Using this app, you can define the page size and margin allowing you to customize the page size.
Features:
- It allows you to choose a custom size for the page.
- It offers a number of preset options, for example, different page sizes and margins, sheets, declarations, letters, etc.
- Retains the new page size when the document format is converted to PDF.
- It allows you to get a printout of the document via the settings.
For larger documents, it may take longer to resize the pages. However, once the resizing is finished, all changes are handled perfectly.
Price: free.
Conclusion
Before you get your hands on these very useful apps, you must first give away some excellent add-ons that already accompany Google Docs or that are hidden inside the menu. From typing by voice to creating documents from notes, it already has some useful built-in options. However, for advanced requirements like citing references for search content or automating tasks like automatic data and graph insertion, you might find the add-ons listed above extremely beneficial. Simply make your choice from the list according to your needs and easily edit your Google Slides.
