Google Docs will now show edit history and contributors when you highlight text

Starting right now, Google Docs will begin showing you recent edits made to a document, and more importantly, to a specific range of text when you highlight and right-click. If you want to use the menu system above the document, you can highlight some text and then choose ‘Show Editors’ from the dropdown menu. This is an improvement over having to open the version history and sift through it or view the document’s activity from the Google Drive details panel!

Those with Scheduled Release domains should note that this is beginning to roll out to them at this time, but it will take up to 2 weeks from today to appear. Rapid Release domains do have access right this very moment, as I previously mentioned. There’s nothing whatsoever for admins or end-users to set up – just visit a Google Doc and test it out! You can see from the image below that a clean dialogue box appears when you perform the task, and there’s even a link that pulls up the full version history of the document as well, just in case you need more context on the editors or their recent contributions.

Hopefully, this helps to give educators and employers utilizing Workspace better visibility over what changes are occurring in important documents without forcing them to wait for a full page of details to load – time is money, after all, isn’t it? Are there any updates to Google Docs that you wish to see implemented? The company has improved so very much this year during the pandemic, but there’s always more that can be done, so I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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