Create a Document: To create a new document, go to your Drive, click the red Create button, and select Document from the drop-down menu. As soon as you name the document or start typing, Google Docs will automatically save your work every few seconds. At the top of the document, you'll see text that indicates when your document was last saved.You can also start a new document while in an existing Document, Spreadsheet, Presentation, or Drawing. Just click the File menu, click on New and choose Document.
Pro-Tip: In Chrome Browser omnibox, just type doc.new for a brand new blank document!
Upload an Existing Document: You can also upload a variety of file types into Google Drive and have it automatically convert into a document. To Uploading a file (MS Word, Excel, PPT, PDF, etc.) into Drive, File Upload on the top menu bar. (It is the red button next to the create button just mentioned before!)
Click Choose File or Browse, select the document, and click Open. The file can be an .HTML, .DOC, .DOCX, .RTF, .ODT, or .SXW file.
Choose a name for the file if you want the file name to be different from the current file name.
Click Upload File.
Be sure that in your upload settings (in the Gear settings in the right corner of Drive) are set to Confirm settings before each upload.
Editing a Document: When you create a new Google Document, you are presented with the document interface that provides options for editing.
Research, made simple: Explore in Docs makes researching and writing reports on the go a whole lot easier. Whether you’re writing about mobile retail trends or planning your next team offsite, you’ll get instant suggestions based on the content in your document. We’ll automatically recommend related topics to learn about, images to insert and more content to check out in Docs on your Android, iPhone or the web.
We know that it’s helpful to refer to other content when writing an analysis, summary or proposal. That’s why we’ve also made it easy to find a related document from Drive or search Google, right in Explore. Less time spent switching between apps more time to polish your ideas.
Inserting Items: When looking insert any items in your document (such as hyperlinks, images, headers & footers, and Drawings), generally all options can be found under the Insert Menu.
To insert an image in your document:
Click the Insert drop-down menu from the toolbar and select Image.
Depending on what image you'd like to add to the document, select from the following options:
Upload: Choose an image from your computer and click the Select button.
Take a snapshot: Use your webcam to capture an image to use in your document.
By URL: Type the URL of an image from the Web and click Select.
Google Image Search: Enter a search term to find an image using Google Image Search, and click Search images.
Picasa Web Albums: Choose an image from one of your Picasa Web Albums and click Select.
Stock photos: Search the stock photography archive and select an image.
Once you've found what you were looking for, click the image and the Select button.
Review how to edit and maneuver your image once it is in your Document.
Insert a Google Drawings: With Google drawings, you can create and collaborate on flow charts, design diagrams, and other types of drawings. You can also chat with other editors from within Google drawings, publish drawings as images, or download drawings to your computer. To get started when in Documents, just go to Insert select Drawing.
Insert Special Characters: To add special characters (like arrows, shapes, non-Latin characters and even emoji's), click the Insert menu and select Special characters. You can use the drop-down menus to explore categories of characters.
Google Apps 101 by Kurt Wismer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.