How to Easily Summarize Your Google Docs

ByJim Miller

When you have to deal with multiple documents or long 50-page documents, it's often better to have a TL;DR version to get a quick understanding of the main points. Thankfully, Google Docs has a summary feature that allows authors to summarize their entire document in just a few sentences. And if the author fails to add a summary, you can take advantage of Google's “Auto-generated summaries” feature to generate a summary automatically. Here's a guide on how to add a summary to your Google Docs, both manually and automatically.

Manual Summary

Adding a summary to a document is available for all users of Google Docs, including the free version. There is no word or character limit, so the summary can be as long as needed.

  1. Open the document you want to add a summary to. Click on the “View” option in the menu bar and make sure the “Show outline” option is enabled.
  2. Click on the document outline icon at the top left corner beside the document.
  3. In the outline, you'll find the “Summary” option. Click on the plus sign (+) beside it to add a summary to the document.
  4. A text box will appear where you can add a quick summary of the entire document.
  5. Press Enter to save the summary. Once saved, the summary will be visible to everyone who can view the document.
  6. To move to the next line in the summary, press Shift+Enter.
  7. To edit the summary, click on the edit icon beside the summary. Press Enter to save the edited version. To delete it, remove all the text and press Enter.

Anyone with write permission to the document can add or edit the summary in Google Docs.

Automatic Summary

Instead of creating summaries manually, you can take advantage of Google's “Auto-generated Summaries” feature to create automatic summaries using AI. Please note that this feature is currently only available to Google Workspace Business users.

  1. Open the document you want to create a summary for. Just like manually, click on the “View” option in the menu bar and make sure the “Show Outline” option is turned on. Click on the document outline icon at the top left to open the outline.
  2. If you are on the Workspace Business plan, the plus symbol beside the “Summary” option will change to a blue document with stars. This means that Google has created a summary for your document.
  3. Clicking on the document icon will add the summary automatically. You can make changes to the generated summary if needed. Press Enter to save the summary.
  4. Just like a manually added summary, you can click on the edit icon at any time to edit the summary. You can also remove the entire generated summary and press Enter to delete it.

Users with the Workspace Business plan can add these auto-generated summaries to any document and share them with others. However, please note that the document should be in English and have enough data to create an auto-generated summary.

Summarizing Google Docs is a great way to save time and get a quick understanding of the main points in a document. Whether you prefer adding a summary manually or using the auto-generated feature, Google Docs has you covered.