Once you’re tied to the Google Workspace ecosystem, by choice or by your employer, it’s easy to appreciate the convenience of Docs, Sheets, Slides, and other apps in the company’s document editing suite. Google has added a few new features to Docs recently, like support for polls and a streamlined access request system. Now, you’ll also see line numbers in your documents.
If you’ve worked with large documents, you’ll have an appreciation for collapsible section headers and line numbers to make sure you don’t break that scroll wheel sifting through pages. While Docs already has the former, support for the latter is rolling out to everyone with a Google account starting today, bringing Docs a step closer to feature parity with professional word processing tools. The new option to enable line numbering is available under Tools → Line numbers → Show line numbers.
Line numbering on Google Docs
You can configure line numbering to appear in the entire document, on a specific page, or only in a certain section of your text. However, remember that your line numbering will also show up in printouts of the file. Also, Google has disabled line numbering for the pageless format on Docs, where the concepts of margins and pages are removed for a smoother infinite scroll-like experience.
When enabled, line numbering greatly simplifies collaborative editing, because your team can refer to corrections by the line number instead of calling it the “third sentence in the fourth paragraph of the second sub-heading.” Graciously, Google is not limiting this feature addition to Workspace accounts only, so even those with free-tier personal accounts can take advantage of it when working on Docs. However, don’t panic if you can’t see the option for line numbering just yet, because Google expects the rollout to complete by August 22, 2023.
