Getting Started with Writer  

Writer is an online word processor that allows you to write, edit, and collaborate on your documents from your laptop, desktop, and mobile devices. Writer's simplified user interface ensures seamless focus on the task at hand, with its wide range of features.

Overview of Writer Features

• Document creation and editing: Create, edit, and format content easily and efficiently using the various built-in tools and options.
• Sharing and collaboration: Create or edit documents collaboratively with your team, suggest and track changes, add comments, and more. Also share documents with granular permissions like view, comment, edit, and share.
• Document design: Design professional looking documents with built-in style sets and themes. Apply specific style for your organization's documents for consistency.
• Writing assistant: Get contextual spelling and grammar suggestions and improve your overall content quality.

Dashboard Overview

Writer Dashboard

You will be redirected to Writer's dashboard as soon as you log in. It is a one-stop place to:

• Create new documents, or upload existing documents.
• View and access all documents created by you and shared with you.
• Enable/disable offline access.
• And more.

Besides the option to create a blank document and upload documents, Writer's dashboard has the following main tabs:

• Documents Tab
• Templates Tab
• Offline Tab
• Trash Tab

Documents Tab

This tab lists all the documents you've created, accessed, and more under these categories:

• Recents
• My Documents
• Shared with me
• Favorites

By default, My Documents will be the selected tab in Documents.

Templates Tab

This tab lists all the document templates created by you, shared to you, and also the ones publicly available for all users of your organization.

• Document Templates: You can access the templates created by you, your organization, and Writer's public templates for each domain, such as Resumes, Labels, and more under each separate sub tab.

Offline

This tab displays the 20 most recently accessed documents and allows you to work on them, only when the Offline mode is enabled. Click here to learn more about Offline access in Writer.

Trash

This tab lists the documents deleted by you.

Dashboard Actions

Create blank documents

1. Login to https://mail.gov.in
2. Select the Writer application from the top menu.
3. Click the Create New button placed in the top right side of Writer's dashboard.
4. Click Blank Document from the list of options displayed. This will create a new document. 
5. Double-click Untitled Document located beside the file menu and enter an appropriate name for the file.

Upload new documents

1. Login to  https://mail.gov.in
2. Select the Writer application from the top menu.
3. Click the Upload button on the top right corner of Writer's dashboard and click Upload Document.
4. In the Upload Document dialog that opens, choose how you want to upload your document: From Computer or From URL.
5. To upload a document from your desktop, choose From Computer in the Upload document dialog and click Browse.
6. Navigate and choose your desired file from your desktop in the dialog box that is displayed.
7. To upload a document from an URL, choose From URL in the dialog and type or paste the URL.

Supported File Formats

These are the formats Writer supports for document import and export:

For Document import:
.docx, .doc, .docm, .dot, .dotm, .dotx .rtf, .odt, .txt, .html, .htm, .tex

For Document export:
.docx, .rtf, .txt, .html, .odt, .epub, .pdf

For File Size Restrictions:
These are the file size restrictions for document import:

You can also import and export documents from within a document in Writer. To do so, click the File menu > click the Upload Document/Download As button, respectively.

Open documents

1. Login to https://mail.gov.in
2. Select the Writer application from the top menu
3. Choose your tab under the Documents tab.
4. Click the document you wish to open and the document will be opened in a new tab.

You can rename, favorite, view the document's properties, share it to collaborators, and trash it from the dashboard by clicking the more options after hovering over a document.

Open documents from other folders

1. Login to  https://mail.gov.in
2. Select the Writer application from the top menu.
3. Click the Open icon in the right-side of the dashboard.
4. A popup will display the documents under My Folders. Click any of the documents to open them.

You can open documents from other folders by choosing the folder in the right side of the popup and clicking the file from the list of files displayed.

Document modes

 Writer's documents have three modes:

• Compose mode: Create and edit your documents with contextually placed tools.
• Review mode: View, track, and manage comments and changes.
• Distribute mode: Finalize and publish your document using print, download, etc.

A document's current mode is displayed in the drop-down button beside the notification icon. To switch between the document's modes, click on it and select the required mode.

Document editing and formatting options:

Writer allows you to create, edit, and format documents efficiently with the various tools such as:

• Cut, copy, and paste.
• Different font, font sizes, and colors.
• Bold, italics, underline, strikethrough, and other formatting options.
• Alignment: Left, Right, Center, and Justified.
• Bulleted and number lists.
• Quick Text.
• Headers and footers.
• Cover page.
• Auto-correct with formatting
• Translate the document's content into 70+ languages.
• And more.

To access the various editing and formatting options in Writer:

1. Open your document in Writer.
2. Click the hamburger menu in the left side of the document.
3. Click the Format tab. The editing and formatting options will be displayed.

Writer allows you to add various non-text elements such as:

• Images: You can add images from:
  • Desktop
  • Web URLs
  • Your library of images across  Writer documents
  • WorkDrive.
• Tables
• Symbols and Equations
• Charts and videos
• Barcodes and QR Codes
• Page, column, and section brakes
• Signature and initial, and more options

To insert non-text elements:

1. Open your document in  Writer and click the hamburger menu in the left side.
2. Click the Insert tab. The various non-text elements supported will be displayed.
3. Click your preferred option and add it to the document.

Document sharing and collaboration:

Writer allows you to share documents with pre-defined permissions and collaborate with colleagues in real-time. Collaborators can update a document's content, edit its content, suggest changes, and add comments.

1. To share your documents:
2. Click the Share icon located at the top-right corner of the document.
3. In the Share dialog that is displayed, type the email address of the user to whom you wish to share the document, choose the desired permission, and Click Share.

You can view the name, email address, and permission of every user who has access to this document in the Who can access tab in the Share dialog.

Track changes and add comments in Writer

Writer allows document collaborators to  track the edits made to your document with different colors Track Changes.

To enable Track Changes:

1. Open your document in Writer.
2. Click Track Changes in the bottom-right corner of the document.
3. Track Changes will be enabled successfully, and each collaborator's edits will be marked in a unique color.

To track the edits made by the collaborators, the document must be shared in either Edit or Share permission, and the Track Changes option must be enabled.

To accept/reject suggested changes:

1. Click on any of the changes suggested by the collaborator in your document.
2. A popup will be displayed with the name and image of the collaborator who suggested the change.
3. Click Accept or Reject to retain or ignore the edits.

To add comments:

1. Open your document in  Writer.
2. Select the content for which you wish to add a comment and click the Add Comment option located just below the Review button. You can also right-click and select Add Comments from the list of options.
3. Type your comment in the comment box that opens up. You can format, hyperlink, and also insert emojis in the comments.
4. To make the comment visible only to specific users, click the drop-down button beside All and choose the desired option.
5. You can also notify specific users about the change/suggestion using @<username>
6. Click Add to save the comment.

Engagement Insights:

Writer provides a detailed report on the time each collaborator spent in your document.

Steps to see the engagement report:

1. Open your document and click the down arrow in the Share button.
2. Click Engagement Insights from the options.
3. The Engagement Insights panel will open with the stats on which collaborator viewed the document and how much time they spent looking through the document. You can also click a specific collaborator to know their activity in the document.

You can also access Engagement Insights from the hamburger menu and clicking the Tools tab and then the Engagement Insights.

Document design

Writer provides option to design professional looking documents with the various built-in style set and themes. You can also set  a specific style for your organization's documents for consistency.

Here are a few highlights of the design options in Writer:

• Import existing document designs into Writer
• Set default document designs
• Set and customize border and shading options in documents
• Set section/line/page breaks, multi-column layouts, and more.

To access these options in  Writer:
1. Open your document and click the hamburger menu in the left side. 
2. Click the Design/Page Setup tab.

Document Tools

To use these advanced tools, click the hamburger menu in the left side of your document and click the Tools tab.
Writer provides the below advanced tools like:

• Navigation: View all the images and navigate through lengthy documents with its headings, bookmarks, and more.
  Content security options: Lock/unlock specific content to avoid editing it, mask content from your collaborators, convert text to a table to display information effectively.
• Focus typing: Focus only on the current content paragraph as the rest of the document content is blurred.
• Typewriter sound: Get the feel of typing using a typewriter with key sounds.
• Transliteration: Type in your preferred language with an English keyboard in  Writer. The text will be converted to a word with similar pronunciation in the target language. Writer supports Tamil and Hindi for transliteration.
• Spell Check: Proofread your document's content and get spelling and grammar suggestions as you type in your preferred language.

Document export

Writer allows you to export documents in your preferred file format to your desktop or share them to the desired users via email.

List of formats that Writer supports for document export:
.docx, .rtf, .txt, .html, .odt, .epub, .pdf
To export your documents:

1. Open your document and click the File menu in the top-left corner.
2. Click Download As from the list of options.
3. Click your preferred option, and your document will be exported to the Downloads folder on your desktop.

AI-driven writing assistant:

Writer is equipped with an AI-driven writing assistant to provide suggestions and help you with your writing.

A few aspects the writing assistant can help with:

• Perform spell and grammar check as you type and make your content error-free.
• Get a detailed analysis of your content's quality based on various parameters such as readability, average length of sentences, frequently used words in your document, and help enhance your content.

Document customization

Writer allows you to personalize your documents by setting various default features or customizing them to suit your needs:

A few things which you can personalize are:

• Autocorrect rules
• Default font and styles
• Notification preferences
• Document languages
• Date format

Steps to set default font and styles:

1. Open any document in  Writer and click the hamburger menu in the left side of the document.
2. Click the Default icon under the Font tab.
3. The default style dialog will show the list of font and paragraph styles, such as font, character spacing, line spacing, and more, applied to the current document.
4. Click the checkbox next to Set as default for all new documents if you wish to have the applied style for all your new documents.
5. Click OK. The style set will be automatically applied to all new documents you will create.

To customize the existing style set, change the style you wish to under the Font tab and follow the above mentioned steps.

Steps to set document notification preferences:

1. Open your document and click the document mode button before the Share option in the top-right corner.
2. Click Review mode from the drop-down.
3. Click the Email Notification Settings icon in the top bar.
4. In the dialog that opens, choose your preferred setting from the list of options displayed and click OK.

The setting which you choose will be applied for the current document. If you wish to have it for all your new documents.click the checkbox next to Set as default for new documents and click OK.

Steps to set document language and date format preferences:

1. Open the document and click the Settings icon in the top-right corner.
2. Choose Language & Region from the list of options.
3. In the Settings dialog that opens, choose your desired locale by clicking the Locale option.
4. Choose your desired date format from the list of formats by clicking the Date Format option.
5. Click Save.