The Next Generation of Documents
In this guide, you'll learn the basics of using the next generation of Documents compared to Classic Documents.
What's New and Improved
Scroll through your entire document without clicking between sections.
Increased performance means an even more seamless editing experience.
View multiple documents side by side on separate monitors.
Real-time Collaboration
Automatically saved changes enable real-time collaboration—since there’s no need to save and share your edits, you’ll no longer see a Share button in your toolbar. Because changes are automatically saved, you can undo changes across entire documents while editing, not just single sections.
Automatic Revisions
Making changes to a document now automatically creates a revision in the History panel, keeping you up to date on all document edits. You can open these revisions or create a blackline of two revisions at any time.
Classic
Next Gen
Track Changes Panel
Once Track Changes is turned on, you can navigate through all the changes in your document from the Track Changes panel. This panel shows what changes were made, who made the changes, and allows document owners to accept or reject individual changes.
Document Health
Document Validation is now Document Health. The Document Health feature checks for common document issues, including formulas, linking, and data validation, with one click.
Classic
Next Gen
Work in a Next Gen Document
The key things you need to know to be up and running in minutes.
Navigation
When you first open your file, you’ll see two panels on either side of your document—these panels help you edit, collaborate on, and maintain your document.
Document Outline
The Document Outline lists your document sections in the left panel. Click on any section to navigate directly there, or drag and drop sections to reorder them.
- 1
- You can double-click the document title to rename your document.
- 2
- Using the section controls, you can promote, demote, move, and add sections to your document, as well as open and close all subsections.
- 3
- An arrow indicates subsections beneath that main section. Click the arrow to expand and collapse the subsection list.
- 4
- A comment icon shows what sections have comments. To see them, click the Comments icon in the right panel.
Learn more about the outline in Use the Document Outline.
The Right Panel
The right panel lets you access several features:
Properties
The Properties panel lets you view the settings at both a section and paragraph level. From here, you can adjust spacing, margins, and pagination. Learn more about Document and Section Properties.
Comments
You can view all document comments in this panel for easy access and review. To add a comment, right-click a selection in your document and choose Add Comment from the dropdown menu.
Linking
Select a link in your document to view information about the source link and any destination links.
History
In next generation Documents, all changes are automatically shared with collaborators. You can use the History panel to keep track of what changes are made in a document and who made those changes, including marking revisions as milestones. Learn more about using the history panel.
Track Changes
Document owners can turn on the Track Changes functionality for an in-depth review of what changes have been made to a document. After turning on Track Changes, blue text shows additions, red dots represent removals, and purple text shows revisions. Learn more about using track changes.
Share Your Document with Others
In the File toolbar, you can Import and Export your files. Import allows you to import files into your current document, while Export lets you save your Workiva document as a PDF, EDGAR, or DOCX file.
What's Next
Now that you've seen the next generation of Documents, here are a few things to help you get started: