Finally found the Holy Grail of writing in Google Docs on the Chromebook…

My writing buddy…

I’ve been using Google Docs on my Chromebook for writing since, oh, day one. Day one of my Chromebook days, that is. My tech ADHD always has me jumping around from device to device, from app to app, but I do try to do nothing but write on the Chromebook so that somewhere deep inside me, my brain knows that by me sitting in front of that particular device, I should be writing.

I’ve always been a devotee of Scrivener, but nothing like that exists web-based or Chrome App-based, so I’m relegated to simple text documents. Google Docs is a natural for the CB, since it’s fully integrated and synced, and the offline mode works just fine for those rare times when I’m either (a) on a plane without wifi (scary thought) or (b) in heavy solar flare activity where neither local wifi or my iPhone hotspot work. And GDocs works just fine, with one exception: that sucker bogs down when the document gets too long.

It had gotten to the point where I was writing individual Docs for each chapter just so I didn’t have to go through the pain of loading the document and scrolling down to the bottom of 30,000 words to pick up where I left off. Unlike a standalone text editor (Word, etc.) GDocs ‘starts over’ at the beginning of the doc each time it’s opened. And the Chromebook, an ARM-based lightweight laptop (basically a tablet with a keyboard), doesn’t have the guts behind it to power through the scrolling. I had resorted to dropping a bookmark at the beginning of each chapter with an ad-hoc table of contents on page one so I could jump to where I left off. Silly stuff.

The magic of the Interwebs pointed me to the Holy Grail. Microsoft Word and its equivalents have end-of-document key combinations, like Shift-F5, or Command-Page Down and so on. The Chromebook has neither F keys or a Page Down key, so nothing was working. Until I stumbled across a Google Groups post from a John McFarlin that shone the light as follows:

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MOVE TO TOP OF DOCUMENT

ctrl + search key + left arrow

MOVE TO END OF DOCUMENT

ctrl + search key + right arrow

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MOVE TO BEGINNING OF LINE (move left)

ctrl + alt + up arrow

MOVE TO END OF LINE (move right)

ctrl + alt + down arrow

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HIGHLIGHT A LINE WORD BY WORD

ctrl + shift + left (or right) arrow

HIGHLIGHT ENTIRE DOCUMENT

ctrl + shift + search key + left (or right) arrow

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DELETE CHARACTER BY CHARACTER MOVING TO RIGHT

alt + backspace (replaces DELETE key)

CAPS LOCK

alt + search key, to turn caps lock both on and off

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And so my life just became much easier…