How to Use Gemini in Google Docs to Work Smarter (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Today, we're going to see how Gemini, inside of Google Docs, can help you write better documents, analyze information, and bring material together from different sources. Now, of course, Google has a lot of different tools under the Gemini branding. But right now, we're going to focus down specifically on making the best documents we can. Just remember, life moves pretty fast, especially in the world of AI. So be ready for some of these features to change over time. To start, if you use Google Docs as an individual, you will need a Gemini AI Pro or Ultra subscription. If you're using a Google Workspace account with your employer, you can work with your company's administrator to make sure you get the features you need. When you open a Google document, you will find one, two, three ways to access Gemini features. The Gemini button opens the Gemini side panel where you can ask for a summary, ask questions, or ask for a general analysis of the document. But context and sources make all the difference here. This is my company's employee manual. I can ask whether there's any overlap between this and the social media manual. It found my company's social media manual and it did that analysis. And it can do that because Gemini is able to find and analyze information from other documents that you have on Google Drive. There's a menu in the chat field with search settings. Gemini can find information from your documents, your email messages, or chat conversations. Or if you don't want it to use those sources, you can disable them. You can also tell it whether you want Gemini to use information from the public internet. So if I start a new chat and ask, how does this document compare to modern employee manuals from other major tech companies? I'm not going to get the answer I want unless I enable web searching. Because I'm not asking Gemini to compare data from my drive. I'm asking it to compare or analyze against external information from the web. Now you can also focus on specific context within the document itself. You can select a specific piece of text. Then you might ask something like, how does this section compare with other modern manuals? And it answers that question with information it finds on the web. So context and sources matter and offer a lot of versatility. A great way to use this is to open your resume in Google Docs. Then in the Gemini panel, you can paste the text of a job listing directly into the prompt field. And you can ask it to give some feedback about how well your resume fits that job listing. Or you can start a new blank document and get Gemini to draft new content. Now personally, I don't want AI to write new content for me. But with the tools that we've seen and a few other tricks, Gemini can collect information from several sources and organize them together to streamline your work. When you start with a new document, you can use the Gemini bar on the bottom or you can open the Gemini panel. Either way, in the tools menu, you have this option to match the format of an existing document. So I'll tell it to match the style and layout of my employee manual. Then I can ask it to draft an onboarding checklist for new employees and focus on core employee policies as well as time off policies. I want it to source information across various HR documents and include any relevant information from my recent emails. I'll make sure to enable those sources and let it generate that checklist. It assembles everything and adds it to the draft document. In the Gemini panel, it also shows me a list of the sources it used to find that information. And of course, it matched the style of my employee manual with the same fonts, colors, and layouts. And another thing we can do is generate pictures. Start a new chat to reset and you can request a picture using natural language, but you'll get a higher quality result if you choose create images from the tools menu. That uses the nano banana model. Then you can describe your picture. Once it generates an image, make sure you place your cursor in the document. Then you can preview the generated image or images and click insert to add it to the document. So there's a lot you can do with the Gemini panel. And we also saw a bit of what you can do with the bottom bar. That's the second way to work with Gemini. If you start with a blank document, that bar will already be there ready to help you write a draft. Or if you're starting with an existing document, you can click the Gemini button at the bottom and that will open that bar. You can use the bottom bar to draft new content or revise part of your document. Or you can select some specific text, then choose refine from the floating panel. And you can use these tools to rewrite what you've selected. You can ask for a simple rephrase or a specific tone and you can set your sources. I want to make sure that the web source is enabled, but in the actual prompt, I can also refer to a specific spreadsheet from my Google Drive. Now, Gemini is careful about making changes directly in a document. You can see a preview. You can accept or reject each change line by line. Or you can accept or reject all changes at once. OK, so we've seen the Gemini panel and the Gemini bar directly in the document. The third option is the Gemini menu right there in the standard menu bar. Many of these options are shortcuts or settings for the other Gemini tools that we've seen. But I like that you can instantly listen to a document or listen to a summary of a document using a synthesized voice. This lets me review a document and I can get up and walk away from the desk. Once you have your Gemini subscription all set up, you will find very similar tools inside of Google Sheets, Google Slides, and even Gmail. Along with a growing collection of other Gemini tools for research, app development, project management, and much more. There are plenty of other videos that dive into the other Gemini tools on this channel and more to come. So be sure to subscribe for more.