Drive

If you've ever wanted more room to work in one of your documents, you can now free up some space by viewing them in full screen or compact controls mode. Here's how:

• For compact controls, click the Hide the menus button on the right side of the toolbar. You can also go to the View menu and select Compact controls or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+F.
• For full screen mode, go to the View menu and select Full screen.

If you're in full screen mode, you can return to regular viewing mode by hitting the Esc or Escape key.

Google Docs will remember the view settings you've selected for your documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and drawings. For example, if you change your view setting to "Full screen" while working on a document and to "Compact controls" while working on a presentation, the next time you open or create a document or presentation, it will open in that app's most recent view mode ("Full screen" and "Compact controls," respectively).

The search box

When you're working on a document in compact mode, you can use the search box to apply formatting options and take document actions with just a few keystrokes — and no mouse! With the search box, you can:

• Format text, such as bold, italics, or strikethrough
• Change the font or font size
• Insert images, links, or comments
• Make a bulleted or numbered list
• Open the sharing settings
• Look up the word count
• And anything else in the document menus

The search box is on the left side of the toolbar in Google documents.

Here’s how to use it:

1. Highlight text or place your cursor where you’d like to complete an action (for instance, inserting an image).
2. Click into the search box on the left side of the toolbar, or use the Alt + / keyboard shortcut. If you're using Firefox on a Mac, the shortcut, for technical reasons, is Ctrl + `.
3. Type any formatting option, action, or document setting you’d like to apply.
   • For example, type “Italic” into the search box to italicize highlighted text or to begin typing in italics.
   • Or, if you’d like to insert page numbers into your document, type “Page number.”
4. Select a result to complete the action.

Press the Esc key to exit the search box.