How to Use Google Docs for Writing and Collaboration

The most effective way to use Google Docs for collaboration is to keep one shared document as the single source of truth: give each person the right permission level, ask reviewers to work in Suggesting mode, and rely on comments and version history instead of emailing copies around. Most teams use only a fraction of this, then wonder why feedback gets lost and three versions of the same proposal end up circulating. This guide covers the workflows that make Google Docs genuinely useful for a New Zealand business — and where Microsoft Word is the better choice.

Get sharing permissions right before anyone touches the document

Google Docs gives you three permission levels — Viewer, Commenter and Editor — and choosing deliberately between them prevents most collaboration problems before they start. The person who owns the document and a small number of co-authors should be Editors. Anyone giving feedback should be a Commenter: they can highlight text and leave notes, but they cannot change a word. Everyone else is a Viewer.

Share with named people rather than turning on "anyone with the link" wherever you can. Link sharing is convenient, but a link forwarded once can put a draft contract or salary review in front of people who were never meant to see it. If your business is on Google Workspace, you can also restrict sharing to your own organisation by default and set expiry dates on access for external collaborators — worth doing for anything you share with contractors, clients or suppliers.

A useful habit: before you click Share, ask what the recipient actually needs to do. If the answer is "read it" or "react to it", they do not need edit access.

Use Suggesting mode so edits become decisions, not surprises

The pencil icon at the top right of a Google Doc switches between Editing, Suggesting and Viewing modes, and Suggesting is the one most teams ignore. In Suggesting mode, every change appears as a marked proposal that the document owner can accept or reject — the equivalent of tracked changes in Word. Nothing is silently overwritten, and the author keeps control of the final text.

A workable convention for any team: the document owner works in Editing mode, and everyone else works in Suggesting mode until the draft is approved. Combine that with comments for anything that needs discussion rather than a direct rewrite. Typing @ followed by a colleague's name in a comment sends them a notification, and you can assign a comment to a specific person so it becomes an action item they need to resolve.

This matters because the failure mode of shared documents is not too little editing — it is unaccountable editing, where nobody knows who changed what or why.

Let version history retire the final_v7_FINAL file name

Every Google Doc keeps a complete version history under File, then Version history. You can see who changed what and when, compare earlier versions, and restore any previous state of the document — which means there is never a reason to keep multiple copies of the same file as insurance.

Name your versions at meaningful milestones: "Draft sent to client", "Board-approved version", "Pre-legal-review". Named versions take seconds to create and turn the history from an undifferentiated timeline into a record you can actually navigate six months later.

When a document forks legitimately — say a proposal template being adapted for a new client — make a copy and rename it clearly rather than editing the original. Version history protects you within a document; sensible file naming and folder structure protect you across documents.

Structure long documents so collaborators can find their section

Collaboration breaks down in long, unstructured documents because nobody can find the part they are responsible for. Use proper heading styles (Heading 1, Heading 2) rather than manually bolded text — Docs builds a clickable outline in the left panel from them automatically, and they let you insert a table of contents that updates itself.

For working documents that will never be printed, the pageless format removes page breaks entirely and lets tables and images use the full width of the window, which suits meeting notes, project trackers and internal wikis better than the traditional page layout.

Agree a light style convention up front — which heading levels mean what, how dates are written, whether lists use full sentences. Five minutes of agreement saves hours of reformatting when three people's contributions are merged into one client-facing document.

Google Docs or Microsoft Word? An honest comparison

Both platforms now do real-time co-authoring well, so the honest answer is that the deciding factor is rarely the word processor itself — it is which ecosystem the rest of your business runs on. If your team lives in Gmail, Google Drive and Meet, Docs is the natural fit. If you run Outlook, Teams and SharePoint, Word in Microsoft 365 offers the same live collaboration, tracked changes and version history, plus deeper formatting control for complex documents like tenders, reports with strict templates, or anything requiring precise print layout.

Where businesses get into trouble is running both half-heartedly — some staff on Google, some on Microsoft, files converted back and forth and formatting quietly breaking each time. Converting between .docx and Docs works for simple documents but degrades tables, styles and numbering in complex ones.

Our modern workplace services cover exactly this: choosing the right suite for how your business works, migrating cleanly, and setting up sharing and security so collaboration is safe by default.

Keep shared documents organised, owned and secure

Collaboration tools create a governance problem: documents accumulate, ownership gets murky, and when a staff member leaves, files stored in their personal My Drive can become orphaned. On Google Workspace business plans, shared drives fix this — files belong to the team, not the individual, so they survive staff changes. Put anything a team depends on in a shared drive, and keep My Drive for genuinely personal working files.

Secure the account layer too. A shared document is only as safe as the weakest login with edit access, so enforce two-step verification across the organisation and review external sharing periodically. If you handle sensitive client information, it is worth a proper review of your sharing defaults and retention settings — the kind of housekeeping our cyber security team does routinely.

Finally, remember that Google's built-in version history is not a backup. Independent backup of your cloud services data protects you against accidental mass deletion, departing employees and account compromise in a way version history cannot.

If you would like help setting any of this up — on Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 — call Solution Squad on 0800 900 777.