Google Keep is a fantastic tool for grabbing all those ideas, notes, and thoughts in one centralized location. Especially if you are using Keep on your mobile device, you probably quickly add a number of notes in a single day.
If you're already a user of Google Keep, there's a good chance that you also make use of Google Drive, and in particular, the Docs application for creating reports or writing articles. Maybe you take meeting notes within Google Docs.
Today, I want to show you the relationship between Google Docs and Google Keep, how they integrate with one another, and how you can access both from either application. Let's start by taking a look at Google Docs.
Here I've started a new article, and let's say I've captured a number of ideas within my Keep account. Maybe I've got some images, notes, or the rough draft, the puzzle pieces of a great article, and I want to access that information.
To do so, all we need to do is select Tools, and about halfway down, we have an option that says Keep Notepad. If we select that, what appears on the right-hand side of the screen is a mini version of all of our Keep notes.
We can search the notes, add new notes, and even edit these notes directly from this view. So now, when I've got some text, maybe the start of an article or just a few points, I can select the three dots and say Add to Document.
Now my text is immediately here within my Docs environment. Let's say I want this image and I want to bring it into the document.
I just showed you how to do so by selecting the menu option, the three dots. Well, Keep actually makes it easier; I can just click and drag that image, and now it's directly in my document.
Whether it's text or images, let me give you one other example, this one involving a checklist. What happens when you take a checklist into Docs? It will actually convert it into a bulleted list.
Of course, I can come in here and edit it any way I like. All that great information, all the pieces of my reports or an article or maybe notes that I've kept on a client, I can pull directly into my document.
But it gets even better because this relationship works both ways. Let's say I've got some information here that I would like to bring into Keep.
I'm just going to delete a couple of these notes so we can get a better view. Let's say I want to bring some of this information back into my Keep environment.
You will notice when I drag things out of Keep, it doesn't remove them from my Keep notepad; it's going to keep it there. But let's say this first sentence, I would like to create a new note around it, and it did not originate here.
All I need to do is highlight that piece of text or it could be an image, right-click, and I can say Save to Keep Notepad. Now you can see it's created a brand new note that I now have accessible here within my Keep notepad.
I'm going to switch back over to my Keep application or to the main Keep window. Here you can see that piece of text that I've brought in.
There's another advantage to doing this. You will see down below that there is a Keep integration link.
What happens is that it keeps that link between this note and the actual Google Doc where it came from or where it was created from. If I click on this link, it's going to bring me back right here to the original document.
This is where that note originally came from. Another way of doing this is by taking a note within this Keep viewer from within Docs.
Let's say this is a new note, a new note from Google Docs. As I'm creating this note, it again adds this automated Keep integration link.
It's going to keep that tie, that sync between this document and the note that I'm taking here. I'm going to select Done, and now when I go back to my Keep tab, there you see that same Keep integration link.
If I select it, it's going to bring me right back to this document. You don't have to have all of your notes synced to the actual document where you kept it.
Let's say I just want to add a new note, and it's unrelated to this document. All I need to do is select X, remove that source, and now the note that I take here will not link or be related to this area.
But I know that there are people who are starting to use their Keep notes as another way of keeping track of comments within a particular document. Remember, you can highlight that area, bring it in here, and make other revisions as well.
You can use labels, search by labels if you like, and see everything that is integrated or directly related to this document. Just a couple of ways that we can do so.
Let's go back to our Keep account and see how we can create a new document directly from our Keep environment. Let's say I've got the start of an article here, something titled New Blog Idea.
It's just a rough scratch. I've been writing a few things, or maybe I've grabbed a long piece of text from the internet, for example.
We can actually start a new Google document directly from this note. Here's how to do it.
If we go to the More option down below, you will see at the very bottom there's an option called Copy to Google Docs. When we select this option, it may take just a moment.
It says it has been copied to Google Docs. Let's open that document.
What has happened? Look at this.
It's brought in all that text, everything that I got started in my Keep environment. It's now got me set up within a new document in Google Drive.
It's brought over the title of that note and all of the information that was within that note. Maybe you're a writer, or maybe you have a long piece of information, lots of text or lots of information in a note, and you want to branch that out or apply some rich text editing.
You can flesh it out into an article or report by selecting Copy to Google Docs. Another way of bringing in information, this time from Keep, and bringing it directly into a brand-new document within Google Docs.
There's one other example that I want to show you today and how Google Docs and Google Keep can integrate with one another. Another advantage of using both of these tools together is the OCR technology that is built right into the Keep environment.
Let's start this one in Keep. I've taken a screenshot of a poster here.
You may already be aware that when you are grabbing an image with text on it, Google Keep has the ability to grab and convert any text on that image into real text. If you want to edit this text, let's say these bullet points that are listed here, and you'd like to include that in your Google document, all you need to do is come down to this menu again.
Above the Copy to Google Docs option, we have Grab Image Text. I'm going to select it this time, and what has happened is you can see just down below, it has taken the text up above and it has put it into this note.
I'm going to open it up so we can see it in a bit more detail. It's not always perfect, as you can see.
It's missing a couple of letters here and there. It's supposed to be "at the beach," right? I'm going to put in a capital B there.
This is supposed to have an L, long sleeved shirts and pants. But otherwise, it's done a pretty good job of grabbing the text that we see up above.
Now it's here down below. Now we're going to go back to Google Drive.
If I go and find this note, here it is. Now I have the text within here, right now I have the text available to me.
If I'd want to bring that into my document, I can select it, grab it, and bring it in here. Now it will bring in the entire note, so I've got the image up above, but now I've got all that great text as well.
That's really what I wanted. I can come up here, delete the image, but now I've got all that text that I wanted from that poster.
It only took me a couple of seconds, and now I can edit it, manipulate it here within Google Docs. Those are a number of different ways that you can use information in both Google Docs and Google Keep, and send it between them.
You can have the information that you've grabbed, click and drag, add images, text, even bullet points and checklists directly to Google Documents. I hope you enjoyed today's video, and I would love to hear from you.
What is your favorite tip about the integration between Google Keep and Google Docs? Be sure to include it in the comments below.
Thank you again for watching. I encourage you to give this video a like, and please subscribe to the Simpletivity YouTube channel.
Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.
