Formatting marks in GDocs

[dalkesm]

Being able to conveniently turn on/off formatting marks in Word was golden.  Now that I'm using GDocs 99% of the time, I'm frustrated with not finding a way to show formatting marks.  Apparently, you have to download an Extension in order to do this.  Which I did - and it works like cr&p.  Anybody else have a hack for this or can tell me if this is an upcoming inbuilt feature for GDocs?

[bill_pier3 · Accepted solution]

This would be a great feature request for your specific purposes.  I checked and to my surprise this feature is not yet submitted as a new idea, so please do submit one.

Formatting was by design originally hidden from Docs, given the focus on content over format.  For most use cases I think this is a good thing, and as a cloud-based collaborative editor it has other advantages, even if formatting isn't its strong suit.

[christiannewman · Accepted solution]

As someone who loves the clutter-free experience sans-marks, I'm curious what type of documents you work with, and why formatting marks are helpful. Mind sharing some more detail? And yes, please do post this (along with details of your use case) in the Idea Exchange forum and be sure to add the Editors tag (which encompasses Docs, Sheets, Slides).

[christiannewman · Accepted solution]

@dalkesm makes total sense. I recommend adding this to the Idea Exchange forum (if you haven't already) as I'm a believer in flexibility and will gladly upvote your idea for you.

Another thing you can do is add 'in-app feedback' (in Google Docs go Help / Help / Send Feedback) and describe your feature request.

Product managers are listening.