If you have a Word Document that you want to open in Google Docs, you’re in the right place. Because today, I’m going to show you how to upload a word document to Google Docs.
There are many reasons why you might want to do this, perhaps someone has sent you a Word Doc but you can’t open it because you don’t have Microsoft Word, perhaps you are switching from word to Google Docs and need to convert all your current documents.
But regardless of why you want to upload a Word Doc to Google Docs, in this article, I’m going to show you how.
Prefer to watch a video about how to upload a word doc to Google Docs? Click here.
How To Upload A Word Document To Google Docs
To upload a word document to Google Docs, the first thing you need to do is actually upload the Word doc to Google Drive, and then you will be able to open it in Google Docs from there.
To do this, you’ll need to go to drive.google.com and sign in with your Google Account if you’re not signed in already.
Once you’re in Google Drive, click on the “New” button in the top right-hand corner.
And then, in the menu that appears, click on “File upload”.
Now, in the box that appears, you’ll need to find the Word Doc you want to upload and double click on it to select it.
Then, your document will instantly begin uploading to Google Drive, and you’ll see the upload progress in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen.
Word Documents aren’t usually very big files, so it should usually finish uploading within a matter of seconds. And then once it’s finished uploading, it will say “1 upload complete” and there’ll be a green tick next to your document.
Now that it’s on Google Drive, you can begin the process of opening it in Google Docs. To do this, all you have to do is click on your newly uploaded Word Document in the bottom right-hand corner.
And you will then see a Google Docs loading screen for a few seconds while Google Docs figures out how to display the Word Doc, and then you will see your document open in Google Docs just as though it’s a Google Doc.
Now that it’s open like this, you’ll be able to read it, edit it, share it, and do all kinds of stuff like that!
But, if you look in the top left-hand corner near the name of the document, you will see this little blue badge that says “.DOCX”, and that means that while you are using it in Google Docs, it’s technically still a Word Document.
And if you just want to simply read or edit it, there’s really nothing wrong with it being a Word Doc as it still works perfectly fine. But some features like Google Docs Offline will not work if it’s still a Word Doc.
So, if you want to fully convert it into a Google Doc to gain access to all the Google Docs features, all you need to do is click on “File”…
And then, in the menu that appears, click on “Save as Google Docs”.
And then, your document will open up in a new tab, and this time it will be a real Google Doc with all the real Google Docs features!
Now you can just close the other tab that has the Word Doc in it, and use your newly converted Google Doc.
How To Download A Google Doc As A Word Doc
I know this isn’t necessarily related to uploading a Word Doc to Google Docs (in fact, it’s practically the opposite).
But if you needed to upload a Word doc to Google Docs because someone sent you a Word doc and you don’t have Word, chances are, you might want to make some changes to it in Google Docs, and then save it as a Word Doc to send back to them.
If that’s the case for you, don’t worry, all you need to do is click on “File”.
And then, in the menu that appears, hover over “Download”, and click “Microsoft Word”.
And then the Document will be downloaded to your computer as a Word Doc.
And that’s all there is to it! You now know how to upload a Word Doc to Google Docs, convert it into a real Google Doc, and even re-download it as a Word Doc if you want to.
