The complimentary document templates available in Google Docs are genuinely handy.
These templates act as a convenient launchpad if you’re assembling a report, a slideshow or even a resume. When you start a new document, spreadsheet or presentation, these templates offer a shortcut to the format and appearance you need.
Here’s the bad news: most of these public templates are about to be removed.
If you want any of these templates, you should download them right away.
Time is limited. You have hundreds of publicly shared templates available now, but the bulk of them will soon disappear — possibly within a week or so.
“We’ll let you know the exact date with a message in the old gallery, but it will not take place before February 1st, 2017,” Google said in a recent announcement to Google Drive users.
After Feb. 1, though, things become uncertain.
Why are you removing my free resources?
So, why is Google retiring this gallery of useful templates? According to education-technology site Control Alt Achieve, Google is moving to a fresh set of publicly available templates because it wants to “add features that have been missing” from the old collection. That includes the capacity to “add your own custom templates for your domain.”
You can find the revamped free templates on the main pages of four Google apps:
The new templates, to be fair, look very polished. They’re crafted by professionals. They’re tidy, modern and professional.
So what’s the issue? Well, there aren’t nearly as many options as before.
“Unfortunately, the new template galleries offer only a fraction of templates from which to choose. For example, the new Docs template gallery offers 29 as opposed to the hundreds it used to provide,” noted business and tech site NewCo Shift.
At the same time, Google is phasing out the older template repository.
All right — what should I do next?
Take a look at Google’s updated templates and see if they meet your needs. The new assortment might be sufficient for you.
But if you want to preserve the expansive gallery of legacy templates that’s about to vanish, with its wide variety of layouts and formats, view it here.
You can filter the listings by type. Search for documents, spreadsheets, presentations, forms or drawings. Then narrow your results further by category.
Open any template that interests you by clicking the “Use this template” button.
After you do that, it’s saved to your Google Drive.
Now it belongs to you permanently. But remember — you’re running out of time to act.
Your turn: Do you make use of Google Docs’ public templates for any projects?
Alex Mercer ([email protected]) is a senior writer at Savinly. A freelance contributor on the side, Alex appreciates Google Docs’ free invoice templates. They’re handy and zero-cost.
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