How to use Markdown in Google Docs | MarketingwithAnoy

There is also formatting support. Italics are added by surrounding text with either asterisks or underscores; bold by surrounding text with two stars or two underscores on each page; and crossed out by surrounding text with hyphens. Like this:

Finally, you can quickly create new headings by starting a new line with a punctuation mark followed by a space. For example, “#heading” on a new line would be the full-size heading. To make smaller headings, simply add more pound characters, “## Like This” for an H2 heading and “### Like This” for an H3 heading and so on.

Now this is far from the full list of what markdown can do. Unfortunately, Google Docs does not support everything. There is no support for inserting images with markdown, for example, which is something that would save me a lot of time. There is also no support for block quotes, code blocks or horizontal rules, to name a few more things. No, Google Docs’ markdown support only offers links, italics, bold, strikethrough, and headings. However, it’s most of what I use markdown for, and it’s better than what we had before, which was nothing.

What is not supported

As I mentioned, this is not Google Docs adding full markdown support. Text is converted to Docs’ original formatting immediately, which means there is no way to edit the text in the markdown after that. Google Docs does not turn into a markdown client, it just offers a fast way to convert text.

One disappointment, though, is that Google Docs only converts markdown as you type – it does not convert inserted text. If you write documents in a markdown editor and paste them into Google Docs for collaboration, you might think that markdown support will speed up your workflow. It will not – at least not in this way. Still, it’s all better than nothing, and it’s going to make editing a lot easier for me.

Make Google Docs less papery

While we’re making Google Docs just a little more modern: Have you noticed that the interface is still dominated by virtual pieces of paper? If you have not printed a document since the last decade, you probably do not need to see a digital representation of a page as you type. Good news: In 2022, Google will finally offer an option to turn off pageviews. click File then Page setup.

From here you can choose Sideless option and even set it as default. And since you are not working on an actual page, you might as well set which background color you want. We live in the future!