Google Docs adds a feature we thought it already had: non-printing characters

[ad_1]

Google is adding a feature to Google Docs that lets you see nonprinting characters like 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 it’s formatted rather than having you rely solely on what you can see to tell if something is a tab or a bunch of spaces. It can also be more helpful when troubleshooting messed up formatting.

Before now, people had to rely on third-party add-ons for Google Docs to see non-printing characters. While it’s not a feature that many people will greatly appreciate (more on that in a sec), there was certainly demand. A request on Google’s IssueTracker received over 80 votes from people who said they were shocked by not being able to see the characters. Some even left passionate comments: My team agrees this is a big deal with Google Docs, wrote one user in 2019, while someone asked how it hasn’t been made available yet?? less than a week ago.

This gif shows what a document looks like with view mode on and off. Gif: Google

On the other side of the coin, many of my colleagues and I were surprised to hear that the app didn’t have this feature until now. Apparently, none of us had ever felt the need for it or thought to check it out and yes, it seems a little strange in retrospect, as they were all writers, but I guess we just assumed it was there.

I was also surprised that Google Docs hadn’t since I remember learning about non-printing characters in an elementary school computer class; Microsoft Word has been able to show them for pretty much as long as I’ve been alive. (One of my colleagues recalled that his parents had the feature when he was growing up, which made him think that’s just how electronic documents worked.)

However, adding is better late than never and I’m sure there are some Google Docs users who are very excited about this announcement. According to the blog post, the feature will be rolling out to all business, education, and personal accounts and is expected to be fully rolled out by February 7.

[ad_2]