Google Docs - Make Resumes, Letters & Brochures Free

Google documents are free to use, as long as you have a decent computer and internet access, you can use and store documents on the Google Docs platform. It was initially released on the 9th of March 2006 and has become hugely popular. If you are in need of creating a document, whether that be a resume or a brochure, Google Docs may be a good option for you.

Accessing Google Docs

To access Google Docs, first head over to the Google home page, then click on the 9 dotted menu icon at the top right corner, scroll down in the popup menu and select the option for 'Docs'.

Using Google Doc Templates

After selecting the Google Docs option in Google, you will need to sign in at this point, or if you don't have an account you can create one at this point as well. Once signed in with your Google account, a snippet of the template gallery will appear displaying the template options to choose from, if you would like a better selection of templates, click on 'Template gallery'.

The template gallery can be hidden from view if you prefer not to have it, by clicking on the three-dotted icon just right of the template gallery heading, followed by the 'Hide all templates option'. To display the template gallery again, click on the menu icon located at the top left corner, followed by the settings option, and when the settings window appears, tick the option 'Display recent templates on home screens' and click ok.

Saving, Downloading & Deleting Google Docs

You don't need to do anything to save documents, Google documents are saved automatically into your Google Drive storage area which as standard has 15 gigabytes of free storage space. To download a document onto your computer, click 'File' at the top left corner, then 'Download', then select the file type of your choice, usually, this is Microsoft Word (.docx).

To get back to the Google Docs home screen, click on the blue document icon at the top left corner. You will notice the document created now appears here, so you can access and use this in the future.

To delete a file, click on the three-dotted icon on the right side of a document, followed by remove from the list of options that appear.

To rename a file, click on the three-dotted icon to the right side of a document and then select rename.

Google Docs Offline

Documents can also be used offline without internet access, a good feature to have in the case of losing internet access unexpectedly. Once you are back online, any offline changes made will be updated to the document online. If your web browser's local storage has been cleared manually or by another software, this won't be possible, and you will need to access the Google Docs page once more with internet access before you can use the offline functionality again.

If in offline mode your files are visible but not accessible and you have followed the steps detailed in Google's help center, click on the padlock icon in your web browser's search bar, then cookies, when the list of cookies appear, remove them from the list and click 'done'. Connect to the internet if you are not already connected, refresh the page, and sign in to Google if required. Once you are back on the Google Docs home page, click on the menu icon located at the top left corner, followed by settings. Within settings, switch off the offline option and wait till the process completes, then switch it back on. Once offline mode is set up again, click the ok button to head back to your list of documents, for each document you wish to use offline, click on the three-dotted icon and select 'available offline'. The next time offline mode is used, the documents should be available to use.

Please note the above method may remove any unsaved offline changes made to your documents.

More on Google Docs

At the top of your Google document, there should be some text underlined displaying the last edit time, clicking on this text will render the document's version history and display the document as it was the last time the document was closed. To the right you can find a list of previous versions of the document displayed in date order, should they be available. To restore a document to a previous version, select an edit and click on the 'Restore this version' button at the top.

The comment bubble or speech bubble icon at the top of an open document can be used to create comments in your document. If you leave an incomplete document and return to it another time, using comments can be a good way to remind yourself of where you left off.

Using Google Docs or another app like Google Sheets allows for easy collaboration, click on the share button at the top of an opened document to display the share window, here you can input another person's Gmail address and click send to allow for that person to either make edits to your document, add comments only, or just view it. If you have allowed others to edit the document, please remember that this will change your original file. To see what was changed, click on the last edit link at the top and the document will display what was removed and added. To the right where the version history is, you can also see who made a change. To remove a person from being able to edit, comment or view a document, click on the share button, then from the list of shared people find the person you wish to remove, and click on the drop-down option to the right of their name and select remove, followed by save.