Google is constantly working to improve its productivity suite. Last week, the company brought natural language search so it’s easier than ever to search for documents in Drive. Today, Google is rolling out a new feature to Docs, Sheets, and Slides called Explore.
Explore
Explore is a way to bring insights, design tools, and research recommendations to your documents to help you get work done more quickly. According to Google,
“it’s like having a researcher, analyst and designer by your side.”
Insights for Sheets
Insights helps you make sense of your data. For example, let’s say you have a big spreadsheet filled with numbers, like prices. You can search the sidebar for things like:
- “how many units were sold on Black Friday?”
- “what are the top three items by sales price?”
- “what was the total cost of jackets last month?”
This makes it easy to get specific answers if you find spreadsheet formulas confusing (like me).
Designs for Slides
Using Explore in Slides gives you more attractive design templates. But this is different than regular templates. Explore can automatically create design suggestions based on the slide content. You just pick a suggestion you like and apply it with a click.
Research for Docs
Explore for Docs makes writing reports and research papers much easier. Opening Explore gives you smart suggestions based on your content. Maybe you’re writing a company report about shopping expenses. Open Explore to get Google images based on the keywords found in your document.
Maybe you already have the image? No problem. In Explore, you’ll find three tabs for Web search, Images, and your Google Drive. Search Drive and drag/drop an image into your report.
I’m assuming the Explore feature will gradually roll out to everyone. I checked my own Google account to see if I could test it, but it didn’t show up.
