If you've ever copied and pasted text from a website, Word document or another Google Doc, you'll know how easily unwanted formatting can come with it.
Different fonts, colours, heading sizes and spacing can make your document look inconsistent and take ages to tidy up manually. Fortunately, if you have Gemini included in your Google Docs subscription, it has smart tools that can help you clear unwanted formatting.
Reset the styles that are configured in a document
You may want to 'Reset styles' which will set the styles to be the google default format (not whatever style was in the document originally). To do this, in the style toolbar click the text type dropdown and select Options > Reset styles.
This doesn't change the content of the document itself but it does change the styles available to it. These styles then need re-applying (see below) if you want them to be updated on the contents of the document itself.
Reset formatting for an entire document
If you want to apply default formatting, you can do this across the whole document at once using Gemini.
1. Find Gemini in the toolbar and select ‘Ask something else’.
2. Enter either of these prompts:
“Re-apply all default styles to all content”
OR
"Re-apply all default styles to all content and add in heading style where appropriate."
Tip: Don't know which prompt to use? You should use the second prompt (to "add in heading style") when your content does not already have heading levels set. You can check this by clicking on a heading and then looking in the style toolbar to see what type of text is selected. If it is 'Normal text' then you need to use "add in heading style" in the prompt.
3. Once this is complete, accept the changes it proposes using the tick-icon 'Accept all' button.
Closing thoughts
By using Gemini alongside Google Docs’ style options, you can quickly clear out messy formatting from pasted text, giving your entire document a clean, consistent look in just a few clicks.
If you don't have Gemini, you can re-apply the styles manually. This is quite tedious but does have the same impact.