Google Docs Reviews

by Andrewb16

I use google docs to type up reports, nearly everyday. I type my notes on a variety of apple devices, and usually it works well enough. But occasionally it will pull up an old version of the document, sometimes a few weeks old, and it’ll delete all the previous weeks worth of notes I’ve written. Today I typed up my daily note on my ipad, all my notes were on there (I had used a MacBook Air earlier that week with no problem either). Afterwards I went onto an iPad mini to add to my note and it pulled up a version from over 2 weeks prior, showing none of my notes that I had recently written. I quickly pulled out my phone and checked the doc and it was the exact same on there, both completely sync’d up. I tried to check the history of the notes to see if I could see my deleted notes, but it didn’t have anything recent to show.
The only was I was able to save my doc was by turning on airplane mode on my iPad and then opening the doc so that it wouldn’t update, and then turning the WiFi back on so it could make the others sync to it. This is extremely worrisome to use a service that is supposed to sync your notes across devices, but may actually delete all your data.

by Lizbitzfifty

I love that google docs lets you share your document and work simultaneously with others. It’s very convenient in that regard. However if there were another option for that purpose, I’d probably switch over. There are so many things in google docs that make it way harder and more frustrating than it needs to be. You can’t put text over an image, it’s a million steps just to find where text boxes are located, you can’t paste something in from Microsoft Word without the formatting being destroyed, it’s hard to set a tab-stop that will stay there when you move on to a new line, there are cntrl shortcuts that work for other document creators but not for google docs, and it’s almost impossible to customize a document to look different or engaging if you’re trying to make a handout. I could go on. I’m in my early 20s so it’s not like I’m just tech-incompetent—google docs is just needlessly frustrating to use. It’s all made more frustrating by the fact that google is such a huge company; they have the resources to make docs better but for some reason they don’t.

by 日本語の二年生

You know how we all rely on google for turning in class assignments? Well... IT DID ME WRONG AT THE WORST POSSIBLE MOMENT!!! I take AP World History and had something due today and couldn’t get on it until this weekend but this week it was updated for a big fix that has going on for weeks now that is still going on!!! GoogleDocs crashes at random times whether it’s long or short periods of time, and this week it’s gotten worse to the point I can’t even see my cursor when I type on my phone anymore and whenever I try to exit out of the page to refresh, I suddenly see two icons of my own account that was recently on the doc and and still see the cursor I recently used on my doc. I was copying and pasting my work from one box onto another but suddenly no matter how many times I double tapped on my screen, I couldn’t paste, forcing me to restart my phone and try again and once I got back on my doc, I realized I never pasted my paragraph back on the doc and now my work is lost until I can get on a computer tomorrow and search my version history and revive my lost work!! Sad to say, google can’t be relied on for everything especially when it’s been having a problem that gone unnoticed and unsolved for over 2 months now.

by SwordInTheLight

The only reason I use Google Docs over programs like Pages and Word is that my school system uses it and I have unlimited storage for Google Docs in my drive (which by the way is great). But GoogleDocs is just sooooo s l o w. I don’t know if this is an issue with my iPad (which has plenty of performance issues itself) or with GoogleDocs , but it’s nearly unusable for me. When I use my bluetooth keyboard with it the text is very laggy (or with the onscreen keyboard for that matter) and text editing is an iOS 12-style nightmare. You can’t drag your finger over text to select it like in iOS 13, you have to tap on the cursor, select “Select,” and then drag over all the text you want to select (which is very slow and laggy). I would really appreciate a couple of features, like viewing the same app in multiple spaces in iPadOS (because I find myself needing to look at multiple docs at once more and more these days) or at least some kind of similar system and a better Explore feature like on desktop. And as several other people have mentioned the text correction is nowhere near perfect. It always marks weird things as grammatically incorrect that are perfectly fine. Google please please please please listen and thanks for reading

by NoEyesJess

I’ve been a longtime user of Google Docs—around three or four years—and it’s been great for storing important documents. I’ve also used it a lot for jotting down ideas, writing creative stories, and other personal uses. I feel that these are what GoogleDocs is best for. I’ve tried to use it several times for academic essays, and the current format does not support certain basic functions, especially with indentation, adding page numbers in MLA or APA, and so on. The spell check for Google Docs is also flawed, and frequently marks everyday words as misspelled, and then other words not in the regular dictionary as perfectly correct. The syncing is also kind of finicky sometimes, and you can lose work or have to restart GoogleDocs multiple times in one sitting, if you’re somewhere that there is no ideal connection. So if you’re a student or a professional, you are also going to want Microsoft Word, which has more features and is easier to use.

However, the syncing generally works very well, and I love being able to back up all my documents. The aesthetic appearance of the documents are also very appealing, and most of the basic writing functions are easy to access. Keyboard shortcuts still work, and those shortcuts match to whichever model of computer you are using, so you don’t have to learn anything terribly new to use GoogleDocs competently. It’s super easy to add other contributors, and to restrict privacy/use settings. All in all it has served me very ell.

by Asy4239

Google docs is a fantastic website to use to get work done. It auto saves, allows collaboration, and has so many other features. GoogleDocs , however, lags so much when typing that you can type a sentence or phrase and reasonably expect to wait another 10+ seconds before it finishes typing. And this is on a doc with only one person on it. Imagine the frustration when multiple people are on it! And if you think it’s done typing and go to fix an error earlier in the sentence, it will continue typing in the middle of the sentence (even though you finished typing several seconds prior).
Another problem with it is the inability to copy and paste MLA citations in it. If I’m working on an essay and need to make a bibliography, I’ll copy the formatted citation from an online citation maker, paste it into google docs, then have to manually readjust the spacing to make it correct. While you can just paste it into Word and go, you can’t with google docs, which is frustrating, especially when you’ve got 15 sources to format manually. (This is a problem with the website on a computer, too.)

by Luke726

I’m a writer and google docs has been my go-to platform ever since middle school, when I first learned to use the program. User-friendly interface, most things can be learned with nothing more than a quick tutorial online, and it does not come at the cost of a lack of quality or options.
However, when you’re someone like me who is a frequent user, you end up having a lot of documents. In this case, organization becomes an issue. Scrolling through dozens of documents before I can find the specific story I wish to continue writing is an inconvenience and occasionally a tad annoying.
I wish there was some sort of foldering ability in the platform to better organize different types of documents.
Google Drive already has folders available, I don’t think it would be too hard to add it onto google docs as well. The folders in google docs could be separated from drive and exist solely on the docs platform. Or they could be connected to drive.

by Silvercove

Google Docs is very, very useful as a whole, providing services that allow seamless collaboration and that solve many past horrors of word-processors (like the classic “I didn’t save my doc and now it’s gone foreverrrrr!!”).
As great as it is on desktop, I personally found the transfer to mobile devices a little, well, less great. It’s obviously difficult to find an intuitive way to lay out all the functions of Docs on desktop onto a smaller screen, but it’s honestly such a huge hassle navigating comments and suggestions, even when I’m on my iPad. It’s also kind of annoying that I can’t zoom out more on a doc—basically, once the width of the page fills the screen, I can no longer zoom out. This doesn’t sound like a huge deal, but it makes for a lot of tedious scrolling when an already long document has relatively large text.
Additionally, there are these small annoying glitches that occasionally occur. For example, when I was editing a doc, I kept trying to delete a space, but it would always delete the space and the letter behind it. I tried over and over again to no avail... sigh....
It also seems to me that Docs can get kind of slow? I’m on a new device, so the hardware should be working fine, but there’s a huge lag when I’m trying to type in GoogleDocs .
Other than these few problems, everything else has been working fine and going smoothly.

by Ivd37950

Like most people of Generation Z, the later years of my education (8th grade-present) have greatly benefited from using Google applications such as Docs, Sheets, and Slides. Google Docs’s amazing accessibility, collaboration tools, storage, and auto-save have always been what’s made it better than competing office tools. GoogleDocs itself is great, and once you get the hand of using it on a hand held device, it makes working from almost anywhere possible. I’ve found myself using these Google applications for more than just essays and presentations now a days, as I begin to need work resumés and finance budgets.

So really, Docs (and other Google applications) are great! Except, I’ve encountered an issue when using this Docs app. Now, this could be because of several reasons, however, I’ve found that after prolonged used, when typing, the keyboard begins to lag a bunch, making working on documents so frustrating. At first I thought that the keyboard could be lagging because my iPad might’ve over heated? But, the keyboard has lagged even when the iPad doesn’t feel warm. I’m not sure if internet connection might have something to do with it, but my Wifi is pretty strong, and I rarely encounter issues with it.

That’s my only complaint, but other than that I really do love GoogleDocs .

by Keltonisayapperdog

I absolutely love google docs, especially since I’m in college and it saves your work automatically when your up at 2:00am trying to finish an essay that is due that same day and you fall asleep.
There probably is away to do this, but if not I wish there would be away to categorize documents into different folders for different projects or classes and or poor year. I think this would be very helpful for me since one day I would love to show my kids that hard work does pay off.
The slide shows are excellent and great for presenting history projects to make them at least semi fun and very easy to use once you learn to switch over from PowerPoint... but the basic outline I personally feel is similar yet differently. The docs were it is like Microsoft Word is very identical just a few extra perks of not having to save, having all of your work in one place, and very easy usage.

The only reason for a 4 star was the fact is that if it doesn’t have the filing system “ I would be surprised if it didn’t” again probably haven’t figured it out, but have been using this program since 2015 at-least so I think I would have found it, but things fly over everybody's head sometimes “am I right or am I right?”

by Ilovecatvideos

I am a young writer and I use Google Docs for school and writing. I have many documents that are currently organized by last modified. This means that I have stories that I wrote, stories that my friends are writing that I get to edit, and rubrics, lists, and assignments that my teachers created for distance learning all jumbled together. As you can imagine, there is no rhyme or reason to this mess and I can never find what I need. This is annoying to me. I am trying to get myself together and be more organized, but this is hard when there is no visible means of organization. I want to keep my books separate from my gajillions of distance learning assignments, and that’s not possible. This is a suggestion, not for GoogleDocs , but for Google Docs in general. My teacher told me about Drive folders, but they were difficult to use and they did not separate my work from my schoolwork, as I had intended. I’m thinking maybe when you go into Docs, instead of seeing all your stuff, you see all your folders. Then you click on a folder and it shows you all the documents inside that folder. This would make using Google Docs so much easier. Please add folders; it would make life SO MUCH EASIER!!!

by EngineeringUndergrad

Google’s Docs is fantastic! It is nice to have your document constantly backed up without hassle. I have grown to prefer using GoogleDocs over Microsoft’s Word and Apple’s Pages. I use GoogleDocs mostly on an iPad and keyboard. One thing that stand out for google docs over the other word processing apps is its ease to format using keyboard shortcuts. In iOS this is HUGE!!! The ability to use keyboard shortcuts drastically improves productivity when working in a touch based operating system!

With that being said, I cannot do all my work on GoogleDocs. I can type up most of my documents using GoogleDocs, but I need to switch to a different device to do some finishing touches before publishing my documents. For example, it would be nice to change a documents margin’s while using GoogleDocs. It also would be nice to insert equations using GoogleDocs. As it stands, those features remain on the web based version of docs and not on the iOS version. That being said, google docs is my go to app for any word processing on an iOS device. It is clear the team at google have put a lot of work into developing GoogleDocs, perhaps even more than its competitors.

by JEMmusy

I love the way docs works because it saves your data constantly and it doesn’t glitch on you and it provides you with so many ways to type notes for school, writing, and much more.

I do have some suggestions to make the work flow for taking notes easier though. When it comes to fonts, there are specific ones I like to use for notes, but it becomes a pain to have to go back and switch it to the font you like instead of the default Ariel. The same goes for the headings and other text variations. They default to Ariel instead of the font that you were using before hand.

Another suggestion I have is to make a keyboard short cut for the horizontal line. That would make dividing sections of writing way easier.

The last suggestion I have is to also make a key board short cut for the list option styles. For example, I don’t like using the default dot style for the list. I like using the star one because it makes the list more interesting to look at. So instead of defaulting to the dot style it could default to the style of list that you were using before hand. For example, I would be using the star style of list and then I would section that list off with a horizontal line and then begin to start a new list that would then default to the star style.

In general, maybe you guys could make google docs more customizable or at least have let it have the option to be more customizable with custom keyboard commands for different things.

by Jaquelin2.0

Well, honestly, Google Docs is AMAZING! I love all the features and it just has this very nice atmosphere and it’s just...AWESOME!!! But there is just ONE little problem. You see, before I had an iPhone, I had an LG phone. Specifically, the LG Fortune. And when I had that phone, you could put emojis in the text. But NOW I can’t even add an emoji! I bet you’re thinking this is useless, but what about when I’m writing a story or something? Like for example, I add a texting part to my story. Then, I do it like someone adds an emoji to their text. It WOULDN’T appear! It kinda get’s me a little disappointed because it ruins the whole book. I don’t care if whoever’s reading this thinks I’m dumb or stupid, but hey! I’m saying MY opinion! Isn’t that what a review is for? To share your opinion about a thing (in this case, an app)? Anyway, I just think that Google Inc. should consider this and improve it or fix it. But overall, Google Docs is an extraordinary app that I recommend to everyone. 😄

by Hannah Da Best

I use GoogleDocs for school and for personal reasons. It is an amazing app I have never had a problem with GoogleDocs. The one thing I want to suggest though is that there should be a note section somewhere like the comment section but instead of comments it’s for notes. So like if you think that something should be written down on it but don’t have the time for it right away you can put that in the little note section so you don’t forget . Now obviously you can use the note section for other reasons. Like for me and probably many other writers that use GoogleDocs it would be nice to have a note section so we could write down things that would be nice to put in the books next chapter or something like that. I would love if there would be a note section I would write in it multiple times and it would just be so wonderful to have. Thank you all who read this for your time! Have a great day!😁

by Queen Dre 5115

Before knowing about Goggle Docs I would use word, a coworker who was also in school showed me how to access it on my phone if I’m on the go, or just sitting at my desk. It was much more enjoyable and easy to use when needing to jump back on at any time. I have told others in my class about google docs, it just took a while for me to actually access all my emails that I can link to . It saved me time logging into a computer, when I’m already looking at my phone. It’s better than word. Also when having errors it allows you to see a correction or just add a comment on the side so you can either fix or re word later. I really like that I can pull it up on my phone and allow a friend to read from my laptop for a review on some thing I’ve missed while working and writing. The application saved me a lot of time.
Thank you! I think if there were step for first timers also once you open a google account explain the many options you can do with the application!!!

by OreoFromThyNeptun

As a writer, google docs is my go to whenever I want to brew up a story, create a new character, or just write down little ideas for things. It’s amazing, works wonderfully and smoothly... on my laptop anyways. The only problem I have with it in my laptop is that if a document gets long enough it will have the tendency to lag and be extremely slow, but other than that it’s completely fine. On mobile however, it’s just a mess. It takes forever to load, documents take forever to load, it crashes, and overall it’s just incredibly slow. It’s useful and helpful to have on my phone to LOOK at stuff that I have on docs, but to actually attempt to write there? Yeahhh, I’ll stick to my computer thanks... there’s also the fact that in general it tends to say that certain normal words are wrong, but I could write in something totally made up and wacky and it’ll be completely fine...? So yeah. It’s wonderful otherwise, but honestly it’s best used on a computer only. I highly recommend either way.

by Jenna Sturgeon

Google Docs is a comprehensive cloud document service that let’s me share and create just about anything I could ever want or need. I’ve used it to polish up my resume, capture notes and ideas, record song lyrics, journal my dreams, create schedules, write stories, and more! The sharing features are fantastic; my sister and I co-authored a novel using Google Docs! We can edit and read each other’s work in real time, leave comments and suggestions, and use the chat to stay on the same page. Google Docs is THE essential writing tool for creative and practical uses — plus it has cloud storage that makes it seamless to work on your projects from any device! I’ll often be working on a story on my computer and move to my phone for edits, or pull it up to add an idea quickly while on-the-go. There’s also free templates to chose from that helped me format my resume and other official documents. I love Google Docs, and it definitely earned those 5 stars. I suggest it to anyone looking for a modern word processing application that is catered to usability and will exceed your expectations.

by Shannon.t.k.g

I’m a book writer and I’ve been using a combination of both Word, Docs and Pages for my books, yet Docs is my go to almost all the time since its more easily accessible for all devices I own. But recently, after getting my new iPad Mini (6th gen), whenever I try to multitask (aka open a new app to the side) it crashes on me, and I have to reopen it and scroll all the way down (important to note some of my books are 100+ pages long so imagine scrolling through that) just to get back to where I left off. It is an issue I am only now seeing on my new iPad Mini, not on my iPad Pro. I’m not so sure why that is, or if it’s just my iPad Mini or the Docs app itself. I hope this issue can be resolved soon wherever it may be coming from. Overall, good writing and work app compared to Pages and Word. (I love Pages as well, don’t think I’m choosing; they’re all pretty good work medias in general as long as they get the job done) Just for some of you, you might get times when it crashes. I’m not sure if its just me; I hope my review brings light on the situation and maybe it can be looked in on as to why this is happening to me and maybe some other users

by TopazSW

I write original works and fan fics, and GoogleDocs lets me work on them at any point. Just waking up and I have an idea, just hopping out of the shower, in the line at the store, lunch break, moments of clarity while gardening, you get the point. Since the first time I’ve used GoogleDocs, to the many years later, I have stopped worrying about forgetting some idea I had before I get to my computer. Even if my phone is offline, I have been able to work on my stories. I think it really is my most used app on my phone. Also, because it auto saves, I HAVE NEVER HAD MY STORIES DISAPPEAR! Unlike other writing programs, that have lost me hours of work because of a blue screen, freezing, or other issues, I have never had the pain of opening a Google Doc and finding all my work gone. I do wish it had a better way to organize your files, as what it does have seems “meh.” But, at least, it has some form of organization. Lastly, I love that I can share the doc in various ways. This has been so helpful for me when I comes to sharing my stories. It lets those who are my beta reader comment and make suggestions, those who I wrote for have full access, and those who I want to let just read all have their own set of restrictions.

by Teliantes

I think if I used an external keyboard it might be better, but formatting and getting spreadsheets to function like excel is really not an option. I find that trying to select text to cut and paste or copy or for formatting font size or color is very frustrating. You have to grab and roll your finger just right or you select too much. Also, when backspacing, use caution. I couldn't stop it from deleting far more than i wanted. Make sure you select what you want to delete instead of relying on bkspc to stop when you want it to. I am happy I found a way to do my budget on my iPad since my laptop is tedious to start up just to work on my finances, but i do wish it wasn't so painful to toggle into edit mode. Google should talk to more end users, and I am also not a fan of the company being that I have a 35 yr Career in Technology and I am FEMALE...so I am sure they will wake up and come into the 21st century soon with their treatment of women, and get more women managing projects and holding positions of power. Their tolerance for misogyny is incredibly sickening. I wish someone from a more progressive company would invent a better alternative since I don't trust or like Google.

by JPren09

Don’t bother using Doc’s spellcheck, as it is almost as good as having a third grader edit your paper. Sometimes it catches a few mistakes, but it doesn’t catch but a small fraction of what Microsoft Word finds (and will fix automatically, or at least notify you immediately that something is jacked up). Also, sometimes it seems not to work at all. I’m not sure if it’s a “lagging” issue, a glitch, like one person mentioned in a previous post, or otherwise.

I also dislike the ability to format, as all features (in general) seem harder to use and are more problematic than Word.

Am I biased because I used Word for a decade or so before Docs arrived on the scene? Probably, but I still think there are many fixes needed before this is a reliable and user friendly platform. I’ve spoken to people who believe several of my gripes are due to a connectivity problem, as we use Docs in my school to write essays etc., but I don’t know...it seems pretty frequent and we have issues often enough for me to complain to random strangers on this platform. Sooo, General Google, get on this please.