September 11, 2008

Table of Contents, Dictionary and Thesaurus in Google Docs

It's no longer necessary to use bookmarklets if you want to add a table of contents in Google Docs because this feature is now available in the interface: Insert > Table of contents. To add a table of contents, your document needs to include headings from the Format menu.

Google Docs actually creates a bookmark for each heading from the document and displays the bookmarks hierarchically using lists. Unsurprisingly, when you open the document in Microsoft Word, the application treats the table of contents created in Google Docs as a list.


You can find more information about a word directly from Google Docs: click on the Tools menu and look up the word in Merriam-Webster's dictionary and thesaurus and in Encyclopædia Britannica.



In the Tools menu, there are two other options that allow you to search the web for the selected text. It would be nice to see the results in a pop-up box and to link to them directly from Google Docs, but this is not yet possible.

{ Thanks, Mike. }

8 comments:

  1. The TOC is amazing. Combined with Zotero, I can finally use Google Docs for all of my academic writing. I've been waiting for this.

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  2. this is indeed the icing on the cake for docs...bye bye Word..

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  3. Hello !

    I haven't tried it as of yet, but I would like to know if for texts in other languages than English, dictionaries, thesaurus and encyclopaedias are contained in the menu ? Or must such tools be added by the user by means of bookmarking the links of online dictionaries in the respective language ?
    I write a lot in French.

    Thank you very much for your reply.

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  4. Hello, Alex ! :)

    Thank you for answering. The "for now" part lets me hope that other languages will be integrated as well.

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  5. Google Docs are helpful for people like me who thinks a lot while wring a single sentence

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  6. Nice a worthy effort by google,but we are looking for this option for all other languages

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  7. Where is the widget that adds a Table of Contents?

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