How to use tabs in Google Docs

Google often keeps Google Docs current with regular updates, but the new document tab feature is a pretty significant improvement, especially if you work on a lot of longer documents and spend a lot of time collaborating with other people on projects.

To put it simply, tabs are documents within documents. You could have three essays on Victorian poetry in separate tabs, but they show up as one document in Google Docs. It’s not something you need for every document, but it gives you more options for documents with multiple different sections – projects that previously required multiple documents can now only have one document with multiple tabs.

This is how Google Docs tabs work

There are now tabs and outlines on the left side of your documents.
Photo credit: Lifehacker

The idea of ​​tabs is actually pretty simple, but they’re not quite the same as tabs in a web browser: These Google Docs tabs allow you to separate different groups of pages within a single document. They’re a little like a table of contents or a set of bookmarks, but they’re not quite the same thing – they’re more like colored tabs that you can stick into a long book to quickly find different sections. If you use Excel or Google Sheets, they work similarly to multiple sheets in a single document.

The existing table of contents and bookmark features allow you to jump to headings and specific points within a long, continuous document. Tabs separate sections of your document more cleanly. Navigation is done via an expandable menu on the left side of the interface (the menu that is open by default when you start a new document). Click on a tab and that part of the document is all you see.

To make things a little more complicated, there are also sub-tabs, so tabs can have tabs nested within them. Additionally, the outlining feature that was already there is still there: therefore, any heading formatting you apply in your document will also appear under your tabs. If you’ve never used outlines in Google Docs before, there are two new features you need to get familiar with.

This has benefits for readers as well as writers and editors – remember that many Google Docs are written to be shared. However, it’s not suitable for every type of document: tabs create separate silos within documents, preventing you from reading as smoothly from start to finish. For example, if you’re writing the next great American novel, you’ll want to keep it in one tab and all your notes in another.

How to use Google Docs tabs

You can use tabs in many different ways.
Photo credit: Lifehacker

If you’re in a document in Google Docs, creating a new tab is as easy as clicking + (Plus) symbol next to the “Document Register” heading on the left. If you don’t want to use the feature for that specific document, click the arrow in the top left corner (this will turn it into a list icon, which you can click at any time to show the tabs again).

Create a new tab and it will feel like you’ve created a new document: you’ll be faced with a blank page again. However, it is not a new document, but a new tab within the existing document. If you click on the three dots to the left of a tab heading, you’ll get options about it Delete, duplicateAnd Rename It. You can also assign an emoji to each tab, which makes recognition a little easier.

The three-dot menu also lets you move tabs up and down the hierarchy and add sub-tabs within the current one. You can also change the order by clicking and dragging the tab headings on the left, and create subtabs by dragging one tab over another. You have a lot of flexibility in how you arrange your tabs.

Apply any paragraph headings to your text (via Format > Paragraph Styles) and these headings are listed under each tab as an outline – this was the case before tabs were introduced, but now you can create multiple outlines for multiple tabs if necessary. If you can’t see an outline under a tab, then click the three dots next to it Show outline.

You can also access a from the three-dot menu Copy link Feature you can share to direct someone to a specific tab instead of the entire document. Tabs are particularly useful for creating documents that many other people will read because they separate parts of a document from one another—and for certain types of projects, you may wonder how you ever lived without them.