Add the one essential feature missing from Google Docs

Google Docs is a useful online word processor, but it isn’t Microsoft Word and it lacks some key features that you might expect of an app of this type. Don’t worry, you can add them easily.

Fortunately, Google Docs is extensible and by installing add-ons, you can add features that are missing in the basic web app. What you get is bare bone functions and features, just the basics. The be honest, that is probably all most people use, but sometimes you may wish it had this or that feature from Word. For example, here is a key feature that you will want to add.

The problem

While editing some text using Google Docs, I had a long piece that was entirely in uppercase. All capitals. Now this is not a problem in many word processors because they usually have a function or menu option that can change the case of text in an instance. You simply drag the mouse over the text to select it, then choose the uppercase or lowercase menu option.

Unfortunately, Google does not have this capability and the prospect of having to tediously retype the whole text again is not most people’s idea of fun.

Luckily there is an add-on and you can easily add this missing feature, saving you a lot of time retyping text that is already in Google Docs.

1 Get Google Docs add-ons

Show the menu bar if it is hidden by clicking the up/down arrow in the top right corner, then click the Add-ons menu and select Get add-ons.

2 Search for Docs add-ons

A window appears that contains main add-ons for Docs. Rather than browsing through them all, click in the search box in the top right corner and enter ‘case‘.

Matching add-ons are listed and you may have a choice of two, three or more, although Change Case was selected for this article. Click the Free button to the right of the add-on to install it and it will ask permission to access Google Drive. It won’t work if you don’t allow it because it needs to modify the document stored on Google Drive. Click Accept.

A notification is displayed when it has been installed. Click the cross to dismiss it.

3 Change the case of text

When you want to change the case of text in a document, click and drag over it with the mouse to select it. Then go to the Add-ons menu and choose Change Case. All uppercase and All lowercase are pretty obvious. Invert case makes all the letters the opposite of what they currently are.

Sentence case is straightforward and very useful when you understand what it does. All sentences start with a capital letter, so when changing the case of text to lowercase, it automatically makes the first letter of the first word in every sentence a capital.

If you have problems changing the case, change it to All lowercase and then go back to the menu and select Sentence Case.

This is a simple add-on for Google Docs, but it is one that is incredibly useful when someone hands you a file that has all the text in capitals, or you copy and paste from elsewhere and there are capitals where lowercase will do.

Remove Google Docs add-ons

Installing Google Docs add-ins is easy as we have seen, and uninstalling add-ons is just as easy.

1. Go to the Add-ons menu in Google Docs
2. Click the Manage add-ons menu item
3. Click the green MANAGE button next to the add-one uninstall
4. Click Remove on the menu that is displayed