{"id":596041,"date":"2023-01-10T05:49:22","date_gmt":"2023-01-10T11:49:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.sellorbuyhomefast.com\/index.php\/2023\/01\/10\/google-docs-adds-a-feature-we-thought-it-already-had-non-printing-characters\/"},"modified":"2023-01-10T05:49:22","modified_gmt":"2023-01-10T11:49:22","slug":"google-docs-adds-a-feature-we-thought-it-already-had-non-printing-characters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2023\/01\/10\/google-docs-adds-a-feature-we-thought-it-already-had-non-printing-characters\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Docs adds a feature we thought it already had: non-printing characters"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Google is adding a feature to Google Docs that lets you see non-printing characters such as spaces, tabs, and various types of breaks, the company announced in a blog post on Monday<\/a>. The option, which will be available in the View menu, can help make editing a document easier by showing you exactly how its formatted rather than making you rely purely on what you can see to tell whether something is a tab or a bunch of spaces. It can also be more helpful when troubleshooting messed up formatting.<\/p>\n

Before now, people have had to rely on third-party add-ons<\/a> for Google Docs to see the non-printing characters. While it\u2019s not a feature that many people will have much use for (more on that in a second), there was definitely demand for it. A request on Google\u2019s IssueTracker<\/a> received over 80 votes from people saying they were impacted by the inability to see the characters. Some also left impassioned comments: \u201cMy team agrees that this is a major issue with google docs,\u201d wrote one user in 2019, while someone asked \u201cHow has this not been made available yet??\u201d less than a week ago.<\/p>\n

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\"Gif<\/span><\/p>\n

This gif shows what a document looks like with the view mode on and off.<\/em><\/figcaption>

Gif: Google<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

On the other side of the coin, I, and several of my colleagues, were surprised to hear that the app didn\u2019t have this feature until now. Apparently, none of us had ever come across the need for it or thought to check for it \u2014 and yes, that does seem a bit odd in retrospect, given that we\u2019re all writers, but I guess we just assumed it was there. <\/p>\n

I was also surprised that Google Docs didn\u2019t have it given that I remember learning about non-printing characters in an elementary school computer class; Microsoft Word has been able to show them for pretty much the entire time I\u2019ve been alive<\/a>. (One of my co-workers recalled that his parents had the feature on when he was growing up, which made him think that was just how electronic documents worked.) <\/p>\n

Still, the addition is better late than never, and I\u2019m sure there are some Google Docs users that are very excited by this announcement. According to the blog post, the feature will be available to all business, educational, and personal accounts, and should be fully rolled out by February 7th.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a>
\n Mitchell Clark<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Google is adding a feature to Google Docs that lets you see non-printing characters such as spaces, tabs, and various types of breaks, the company announced in a blog post on Monday. The option, which will be available in the View menu, can help make editing a document easier by showing you exactly how its<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":596042,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2852,496,46],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-596041","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-feature","8":"category-google","9":"category-technology"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=596041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596041\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/596042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=596041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=596041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=596041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}