Google Docs Private View - Highlight and Take Notes, Privately
Far too often, Google Docs creates more work for us than needed. I’ve previously written about how we use Google Docs for collaboration is all wrong. By granting editor or commenting rights to others, we opened the door to endless side discussions and wordsmithing.
I’ve adopted the practice to first read the document in its entirety before commenting. It forces me to focus on the most important feedback and fight the urge to add comments as I read the document.
Yet, how do you remember the notes you wanted to add when you reach the end of a document?
Currently, I download the Google Doc as a PDF. I then highlight and add notes to the PDF.
Yet, this practice isn’t the most productive and hardly streamlined. Hence, the request for a new mode: Private View.
Private View is similar to FilterView in Google Sheets, where you can create a filter of the data, just for your eyes. The filtered data view is not visible to others.
Applied to Google Docs, Private View allows you to highlight sections, add private notes, and add private tasks. All these edits are only visible to you. You can later on convert the notes to public or shared comments, and export highlights and notes.
This mode mimics digitally what many of us, editors and reviewers included, do every day when handed a print copy of a paper.
Most importantly, the hope is that Private View will reduce the work for the original author.