Google Docs is getting a long-awaited feature improvement — when it comes time to properly format a file, users will be able to select multiple paragraphs of text at once, instead of having to repeat the tedious work of the past. For example, if you want to adjust headings on two disjointed paragraphs, or apply the same effect to three different words in a paragraph, you can now do it all together with all targets selected at once.
The default formatting may be sufficient for normal documents, but the actual work in Google Docs becomes a bit more complicated. The good news is that whether you’re using a Mac or a Windows PC, you can select different text fields by pressing the Command or Ctrl key, then let go and click any formatting tool on the toolbar.
In addition to formatting, multi-selection can be used for other purposes—such as when you need to cut and move several paragraphs at a time, or add comments related to multiple paragraphs. Of course, this new Google Docs feature isn’t a panacea, and if you’re trying to change every heading in your file, it’s better to just change the style, rather than trying to manually select each one.
For reference, you can format one of the headers the way you want, then go to the styles section, select Header Level, and click “Update ‘Style’ to match”. Finally, Google said in the announcement that this feature will be available to every Google Docs user in the next 15 days.