A single key to speed up the creation of personal and business documents: this is what happens now if you type @ in a Google Docs document
New @ menu for those who use Google Docs. The small novelty introduced in the last few hours in Mountain View is aimed at making the user experience more pleasant and complete for the increasing number of users, both private and business, who have chosen to rely on Google’s free cloud system.
With the arrival of the new @ menu, working daily on Google Docs will be even easier, and it’s for smart innovations like these that the service gains importance year after year, winning over more and more users. For those who don’t know it yet, Google Docs is a free writing tool that has among its strengths extreme simplicity and the advantage of being able to work both offline and online: in the first case the work is stored on the computer, and once online it is transferred to Google Drive, ready to be shared with whomever you want, whether they be colleagues, collaborators or anyone else who has a Google account.
New universal menu in Google Docs
With the latest update, Google has expanded the possibilities offered by Docs by typing the “snail” in the text. The novelty had been promised at Google I/O 2021 in May, when it was announced that the functionality offered by the @ menu could be made even smarter. Previously, the “mention” in the text opened a menu through which to mention someone, showing their business location and other related information to the contacts shown.
Now the same menu expands with the ability to add text files, calculations, images, lists, call up calendar events, in addition to the one, already possible before, to mention someone. “Simply type in ‘@,'” Google writes, “and you’ll see a list of recommended files, people, meetings, as well as various content elements and formats to include in your file.”
The novelty is a simple and, above all, quick way to add items to your work, and its current and future potential is so broad that Google calls the @ menu a “universal menu.”
When the universal menu arrives in Google Docs
It’s implementation has already started a few hours ago, but Google warns that the release operations will continue very slowly, to the point that between the first and the last to receive it, it could take up to a full month.
So don’t worry if you don’t see it in the next couple of weeks: it will arrive for everyone. It will be available for all “simple” users, but also for Google Workspace, G Suite Basic and Business customers.