How to Use Markdown in Google Docs

Formatting is also supported. Italics is added by text surrounded by asterisks or underscores; bolded by surrounding text with two asterisks or two underscores on each side; and text surrounded by dashes. like this:

Finally, you can quickly create new headings by starting a new line with a pound sign and a space. For example, “# Headline” on a new line will become a full-size header. To make smaller titles, just add more pound signs, “## Like This” for H2, “### Like This” for H3, and so on.

Now, this is far from a complete list of what Markdown can do. Unfortunately, Google Docs doesn’t support everything. For example, inserting images with markdown is not supported, which saves me a lot of time. Nor does it support blockquotes, code blocks, or horizontal rules, to name a few. No, markdown support for Google Docs only provides links, italics, bold, strikethrough, and headings. Still, that’s what I use markdown for most of the time, and it’s better than what we’ve used before, which is nothing.

unsupported content

As I mentioned, this is not Google Docs adding full markdown support. The text is immediately converted to Docs’ native format, which means the text cannot be edited in markdown afterwards. Google Docs didn’t become a Markdown client, it just provided a quick way to convert text.

Disappointingly, though, Google Docs only converts markdown as you type — it doesn’t convert pasted 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 won’t — at least, not in this way. Still, it’s better than nothing and it will make it easier for me to edit.

Reduce the paper size of Google Docs

While we’re making Google Docs a little more modern: have you noticed that the interface is still dominated by virtual scraps of paper? If you haven’t printed a document in the previous ten years, you probably don’t need to look at a digital representation of a page while you’re writing. Good news: Google is finally giving the option to turn off page views in 2022.click document Then page settings.

From here you can choose no pages option, or even set it as the default. And, since you’re not working on the actual page, you might as well set any background color you want. We live in the future!