Creating an Autocue Script

This page takes you through the steps to create an Autocue script form a TV script in Google Docs or MS Word.

Creating an autocue script is easy in principle but there are one or two things which can trip you up, and you may not know that your Autocue script won’t work until you get to the gallery.

If you have a TV script that has been made in Google Docs, with camera instructions on one side and scripted words on the right, it is probably in a ‘table’ consisting of two columns or panes like this example.

(Word docs work in a similar way)

We only need the scripted side of the script for Autocue.

So highlight the script by placing your cursor inside the right hand panel at the top, hold SHIFT and press the down arrow until all your scripted words are highlighted. It should look like this > > > > > >

Important:

If you highlight too much of the script at the end, Google tries to help, and you will see both sides of your document highlighted blue….we don’t want this to happen because you will end up copying the ‘table’ formatting as well as your text and Autocue won’t know what to do with it.

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Do not copy both sides of the script

Once you have all your text – but only the right hand side – selected or highlighted, copy it (cmd-C or Ctrl-C).

Create a new Google Doc and name it, including the word ‘Autocue’, and paste your text into it (cmd-V or Ctrl-V). It will look something like this. You may need to tidy it up a bit.