Use the side panel to collaborate with Gemini

You can use this feature only if your organization supports it. For help, contact your administrator.

With the side panel, Gemini can assist you with summarizing, analyzing, and generating content using insights gathered from your email messages, documents, and more—all without switching applications or tabs.

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Before you use Google Workspace with Gemini
  • Gemini feature suggestions don’t represent Google’s views, and should not be attributed to Google.
  • Don’t rely on Gemini features as medical, legal, financial, or other professional advice.
  • Gemini features may suggest inaccurate or inappropriate information. Your feedback makes Gemini more helpful and safe.
  • Enterprise end users can submit feedback to Google Workspace regarding their experience using generative AI features. End users are informed before submitting the feedback that feedback data should not contain personal, sensitive, or confidential information and may be read by humans.

What is the side panel?

The side panel lets you chat with Gemini while you're working in Google Workspace apps. Here are some of the things you can do:

  • Summarize long email threads and suggest responses.
  • Create and refine text that's based on the context of the doc you're working on.
  • Summarize spreadsheets and create tables and formulas.
  • Generate new slides, create images, and summarize presentations.
  • Ask Gemini questions about files in Drive.

Use the side panel in Gmail

An animation showing how to use Gemini in Gmail to summarize an email in greater detail.

Sample prompts in Gmail

Summarize an email thread

  • "Summarize this email."

  • "Create a list of action items for me based on this email."

Find information from previous emails and Drive files

  • "What time is my next flight?"

  • "What are the main points of the weekly team meeting notes from my documents?"

Search for certain types of emails

  • "Show my unread read emails."

  • "Find emails from [person] sent last week."

Learn more at the Gmail Help Center

Use the side panel in Docs

An animation that shows how to ask Gemini in Docs about a proposal for a new electric bike

Sample prompts in Docs

Write and refine text in context

  • "Write an announcement email about a new feature."
  • "Make the announcement more fun."

Summarize your Drive files and Gmail emails

  • "Catch me up on the latest Monthly Review emails."
  • "What are the main points of @Meeting notes: Core team sync?"

Get help with Google Docs

  • "How do I make my document pageless?"
  • "Can I add markups to my document?"

Learn more at the Docs Editors Help Center

Use the side panel in Sheets

An animation that shows someone asking Gemini in Sheets to create a table to track income and expenses for their family

Sample prompts in Sheets

Create formulas

  • "Create a formula to find cell C1 in range D:G, output value in column G."
  • "Create a formula to find the number of unique customers from North America region."

Create a table

  • "Create a social media tracker for marketing."

Understand a spreadsheet at a glance

  • "Summarize this spreadsheet."

Get help with Google Sheets

  • "Teach me how to use conditional formatting with a color scale."

  • "How can I remove duplicates?"

Learn more at the Docs Editors Help Center

Use the side panel in Slides

An animation showing a user asking Gemini in Slides to create a slide to show a congratulatory message to the team

Sample prompts in Slides

Create images based on slide content

  • "Suggest images for this slide."

Generate a new slide

  • "Create a slide about how to utilize the SCRUM framework."
  • "Create a slide about @Core Team sync."

Write content / summarize your presentation

  • "Summarize this presentation in 3 sentences."

Learn more at the Docs Editors Help Center

Use the side panel in Drive

An animation showing how to open Gemini in Drive.

Sample prompts in Drive

Select a file and ask Gemini questions

  • "Summarize the key points in Sales Team Meeting Notes."

Summarize information across several files with Gemini

  • "Help me understand our team's 2024 strategy."
  • "Summarize project Cymbal."

Learn more at the Drive Help Center

Get started with Gemini in Chat

Get started with Gemini in Chat

  1. On your computer, go to chat.google.com.
  2. At the top right, click Ask Gemini .
  3. In the side panel, select a suggested prompt or write your own prompt. For example:
    • You can ask Gemini to find information from your past chats:
      • When are we launching [feature name]?
      • What did [colleague] announce to the team yesterday?
    • Or ask Gemini to summarize multiple conversations:
      • Summarize my conversations with [colleague] from this week.
      • Summarize my unread messages.
Select a suggestion
  1. Select from the list of suggestions.
    • To get more options, select More suggestions.
  2. At the bottom, in the prompt box, replace the example text with the information that you want.
  3. Click Enter.
Enter a prompt in Gemini
  1. At the bottom, in the prompt box, enter a prompt.
  2. Click Enter.

Tips:

  • You can lose your conversation history when:
    • You refresh your browser.
    • You close and reopen Chat.
    • Your computer goes offline.
  • To remove your conversation history, click More options and then Clear history.

More resources


Google, Google Workspace, and related marks and logos are trademarks of Google LLC. All other company and product names are trademarks of the companies with which they are associated.

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