Google Docs: Text Styles

Lesson 15: Text Styles

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Text styles

Working with large documents can be challenging, but adding styles to your text makes it easier to create documents that look great and are easy to navigate. 

In this lesson, you'll learn how to add styles to your document and how to make formatting changes that affect the whole document all at once.

Watch the video below to learn more about text styles in Google Docs.

Switching between text styles

By default, anything you type in a Google Doc is styled as Normal text.

normal text is the default style

To switch styles, place the insertion point in the paragraph that you want to change. Click the Styles menu and choose the style that you want. 

choosing title style

Repeat this step as you move through your document. Think about the structure of your document as you choose headings. For example, it makes sense to style the title as Title, the primary headings as Heading 1, and sub-headings as Heading 2.

choosing heading 2

Changing the appearance of text styles

Once you have styles applied to your text, you can make formatting changes that affect your whole document all at once. 

Select a portion of text in the style that you want to update. In our example, we are going to update our Heading 1 Style.

selecting text

Make as many formatting changes as you want to the text. You can change the font, size, color, and more. 

making formatting changes

Once you are happy with the text's appearance, click the Styles menu, hover over Heading 1, and click Update 'Heading 1' To Match

clicking update heading one to match

The appearance of all of the Heading 1 text in the document will update.

heading 1 text is updated

You can use this method to update the appearance of other Styles in your document, including Normal text.

Saving default styles

If you create a set of styles that you really like, you can set them to be the default for any new documents that you create.

new set of styles

Click the Styles menu, hover over Options, and click Save as my default styles.

save as default styles

Seeing the structure of your document

Styles are useful not just to change the appearance of your document, but also to give your document structure.

To see the structure, click the Show Document Outline icon on the left side of the page.

clicking show document outline

If you don't have this option, click View, and make sure that there is a checkmark next to Show Document Outline.

turning on document outline in view menu

The Document Outline shows all of the titles and headings in your document. Click one of the headings, and Google Docs will move to that place in your document. 

clicking heading in document outline

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