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A cartoon depiction of the author, wearing a hoodie and smiling motd.co

Google Docs sucks

I hate Google Docs’s organizational system so much. The interface is terrible and feels like every crappy AJAX-heavy app that most Google Apps avoid. It’s slow, it doesn’t auto-refresh so you have to F5/hit the reload button if you make changes in other tabs, and nothing makes sense. Check out this awesome list of things I have to do if I want to create a new document in a particular folder:

  1. Click “New”->”Document”
  2. Type up my document.
  3. Click “Save & Close”
  4. Refresh the document list, since they helpfully opened another tab for me when I opened the document and closed it when I saved, but didn’t refresh the document list when I got back.
  5. Was I accidentally in the folder where I wanted the document to be created? Oops, can’t do that! Click on “All items” in the left-hand bar.
  6. Click on the checkbox next to the new document.
  7. Click “Move To,” then expand a “My Folders” tree item that is inexplicably collapsed despite being the only thing in the dropdown box that appeared, then choose the folder I want to move to, THEN click “Move To Folder”! That’s four clicks!
  8. Click on the folder I was looking at again if I want to see only the documents that are in that folder including my new one.

AWESOME! I can’t just click “New Document” while I’m in a folder and have it automatically assigned to that folder or even choose that from anywhere in the document editing tab! I have to do this every time!

I really like Google Docs once I’m actually editing a document. It feels fast and lightweight and works well across platforms and so on. But everything else surrounding the writing process is such a pain in the ass.