How to use Google Docs’ new automated summary feature

Open your Doc in Google Docs

The first thing you need to do is open the document that you’d like to generate an automatic summary for. Next, you need to head to the menu bar and click on View. From here, ensure that you enable the Show Outline option. If you then hit the document outline icon on the top left-hand side of the page, you’ll open the outline interface.

Get Workspace Business

If you’re on a Google Workspace Business plan, you’ll notice that the plus sign next to Summary in the document outline interface has changed to a blue document with stars around it. This icon means that Google Docs has already generated an automatic summary of your document.

However, if there is too little information to formulate a summary from, Google Docs will not show you this icon and will thus not generate an automatic summary.

Edit in Google Docs

Once Google Docs has automatically generated a summary of your document, you can choose whether to accept the summary as is or whether you’d like to make your own changes. Remember, while AI is undoubtedly getting more intelligent and adept at generating various kinds of text, the tech still isn’t perfect.

You still have a better feel for how your target audience perceives and consumes content; therefore, you are still the deciding factor when it comes to whether a piece of content is acceptable or merits a few tweaks here and there. Once you’ve made any changes you wish to make, hit Enter to save the summary.

Edit and Remove

You have the power to edit the automatically generated summary at any time. All you need to do is hit the Edit icon, make your changes as before, and save the updated summary. If you feel you could write a better summary or simply no longer need a summary, you can also remove the summary at any time. Simply. Head into edit mode, delete all the text in the summary, and then hit Enter to save the changes. The summary is now entirely gone.