Everything You Need to Know About ... Docs, Sheets And Slides
For retirement plan advisers, office hours are not necessarily limited to a set location or eight-hour workday. Tablets and other mobile devices make it easier for them to juggle many of their responsibilities—onboarding participants, conducting presentations, holding client meetings—regardless of when and where they clock in, but can fall short in one crucial area: managing Microsoft Office files.
The Office programs have been frustratingly absent from iOS and Android devices. However, there are three free applications (apps) from Google—Docs, Sheets and Slides—that enable users to edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, respectively. All three are available in the Apple App and Google Play stores and can be protected via a four-digit passcode.
Advisers can use the apps to share files online, so that each member of their team can look at the same file, add and respond to comments, and make changes in real time. This feature can boost efficiency if a firm’s existing file-sharing platform locks a file so only one person can access it at a time.
In Docs, users can also see the revision history of a specific document and access previous versions as needed. As with the desktop Office programs, advisers can create and edit new files without a wireless connection, though the collaboration features do require Internet access. The Google Sheets app allows advisers to format cells, input and organize plan data, use charts and formulas to interpret that data, as well as find and replace certain figures, among other capabilities. Advisers who hold meetings, either in their office or when visiting clients, can conduct presentations directly from the Slides app. There, they can add, remove and rearrange pieces of a PowerPoint presentation, formatting the text, shape and other features of each slide.
Using the Apps
After downloading each app, sign in with your Google
account. From the main screen, sort your files by title, by when you last
opened or edited them, or by when they were last modified by anyone who has
access. Use the search bar to locate a specific file; even if you do not know a
document’s name, the apps can find it by keywords.
Using the menu icon on the left of the screen, you can organize your documents by when they were made or last edited, in the “Recent” tab; by importance, in “Starred”; by whether they were shared or saved to your device for offline access; or via the separate Google Drive app, which stores files online for free. In each app, use the color-coded plus-sign button at the bottom right corner of the screen to create a new document.
In Docs, when making changes to a file, use the two arrow icons at the top of the screen to undo—left arrow—or redo—right arrow—your edits. Tap the “A” icon to adjust the text: Select your preferred style and font type, size and color. Highlight, bold, italicize, underline or strike through the text as you would on a computer; select the “Paragraph” tab to set the alignment and line spacing or to create a bulleted or numbered list.
Tap the plus sign at the top of the screen to add a comment, image or table. Comments will highlight the text in question and will use the name and image from the poster’s Google account to show who added each note. Tap the last icon, three vertical dots, to find and/or replace content within the file; to see the details of when it was created and last modified; to share the file by email or to send a Word doc or PDF version; to print the document; to save it as a Word file or copy it; to get help with the app; or to submit feedback on the file.
While none of the file types have the robustness of their Microsoft counterparts, this suite of apps can make it easy for retirement plan advisers to access and edit their files away from a desktop computer—simplifying their practice so they can focus on their sponsor clients and participants.