Heads up, Google Docs users: Navigating lengthy, complex documents is about to get a whole easier.
Google on Wednesday launched a handy new outline tool for Docs on the Web and Android, which shows headers for each section of your document in a pane to the left of the page. This should make it super simple to quickly jump from section to section, without having to scroll through pages and pages. The feature will even work if your document doesn’t have headers.
“If you haven’t manually applied headers, no worries—we’ll do it for you, intelligently detecting the logical divisions within your work,” the Google Apps team wrote in a blog post. “You can then edit or remove these headers as necessary.”
The launch will also make it easier to move through documents on your Android phone or tablet. Now, when you begin scrolling on your mobile device, a small navigation handle will automatically appear. Touching it will bring up the entire document’s structure, so you can quickly skip from section to section, instead of having to swipe and swipe…and swipe to get to the part you need.
To reveal an outline in your document, just click Tools, then select “Document outline” in Docs on your computer, or select “Document outline” from the overflow menu on your Android device. For more information, check out Google’s Help Center article.
The feature should arrive for everyone over the next few days.