How To Use NotebookLM In Google Docs + Sheets!

Google just released some powerful new integrations for Google Drive that adds Gemini to Drive, Google Docs, and Google Sheets. But conspicuously missing from this is everyone's favorite Google AI tool, Notebook LM. And that's a shame because lots of people, including myself, use Notebook LM as a way to organize different research topics. And although we can generate a lot inside of Notebook LM itself, there's no apparent way to use a notebook inside of Google Drive, but I found a workaround that's incredibly effective and creates one of the most powerful notebook LM workflows I've seen so far. Let me show you an example of it in action. I have a notebook here that has all the information about a trip I'm taking in May to California. I've taken screenshots of all my reservations for my flights and my hotels, for instance. And from this, I want to create a travel itinerary. Now, I could come over to reports and click on this and click on create your own and tell it to put together a travel itinerary. However, you're quite limited in how you can format any of these documents you create in here. And once it does generate, there's no way to actually edit the document without first copying it and bringing it over somewhere else. But coming into Google Docs, I can come down to Gemini on the bottom, put in the exact same prompt, put together a travel itinerary. And here you can see it put together the itinerary for me. We can see the event I'm going to, even my hotel I'm staying at, and the confirmation number. And all this was pulled in from my notebook. Now, I think this is a pretty big deal because I see Notebook LM as a place where you store organized information. and Google Drive as a place where you actually get work done. If I'm working on a script for a YouTube video, for instance, I want it inside of Google Drive, not stuck in a notebook where I can't format it exactly the way that I want or where I can't go back and forth with Gemini to get it exactly perfect. And that's why connecting up Notebook LM into Google Drive is such a powerful workflow. But what you'll notice here inside of Google documents is that there's no option to add Notebook LM as a source. It's just not there. So, how did I do this then? How did I get my notebook LM information into Google Drive? Well, even though you can't attach a notebook here, what you can do is come up to the top and select a gem. And that is the powerful unlock using gems. You see, Google gems are custom versions of Gemini with preset instructions and knowledge sources built right into them. You can set them up by coming over to gemini. google. com. You can see my gems over here on the left. Clicking on this and scrolling down, you can create a new gem. You can give it a name like travel trip, a brief description, my trip to California, and then a custom set of instructions that you never have to repeat again. So instead of reexplaining what you need every time you start a new chat, a gem just remembers your context, which is a huge timesaver for any recurring tasks. But like I said before, gems are the powerful unlock that give us the ability to use Notebook LM inside of Google Drive because when you're setting up a gem, there's also a section down here called knowledge. And one of the knowledge sources you can add are notebooks. I think you probably see where I'm going with this. So let's set one of these up together and I'll show you how this entire workflow works. So, I have another notebook over here all about this open- source tool called OpenClaw. Now, I want to make a video about OpenClaw. So, I want to bring all this information into Google Docs to be able to create and help me create a script for that video. So, we're going to set up a gem to bridge that gap. So, coming in here, I will rename this one Open Claw. And just for the description, I'll put in Open Claw video. But these the name and the description really don't matter. They're just for your own purposes. And then for the instructions, you want to put in something like this. Use the provided notebook as your primary source of information. Now coming down to knowledge, click on plus, select notebook LM, and click on the notebook you want to use as your knowledge source, which in this case is my openclaw notebook. I'll click on add. Then click on the top right where it says save. And now you have successfully set up the required bridge between Google Drive and Notebook LM. to use it. Come over to Google Drive. I will start a new document and you'll need to activate Gemini. You should see it down here on the bottom. Now, this is only available right now, I believe, for certain accounts, like if you have a paid Gemini subscription and probably isn't available in every region yet, but as with most things Google, usually this

starts out on the paid plans and then rolls out to the free plan. So, if you don't have it yet, it should be coming soon. I will click up here though on the ask Gemini button and then click on these three lines and under here where it says gems, click on view all gems. Select the gem that you want to use. So I see the new one I just created called openclaw. That will then close it. Now if we open it up again, you'll see the gem right here. But also know that if it says it right here, the name of your gem, then even if you close it down here, this still has the gem activated. So chatting in here and using this will still use that gem which uses this notebook. So in this case, I wanted to put together a script for me for a YouTube video. So I will click on tools and match doc format because I have a template that I use for my YouTube scripts. So, I will find that template. Here it is. It's just a past video that I've done before. Click on add. And the other thing I'll do is click on this dropdown and select match writing style because I also want it to copy down my writing style so it actually sounds like me when the script is written. So, I'll click on add doc again, click on add document, and I'll select the same one because that's in my tone of voice and click on add. So clicking on confirm, we now have a template and a writing style. So I will tell it create a script for a YouTube video about openclaw. And then I'll submit that. And so check out what it made for me. A script in my exact tone of voice in the format that I want as well. This is something that you just cannot do natively inside of notebook LM because it doesn't give you the ability to match styles or templates. And gems doesn't just work inside of Google Docs. If we for instance start a new Google sheet. Let's actually come over here. New Google sheet. This time I will activate my travel itinerary gem. There it is. And I will tell it create a timet for me of my trip, where I need to be, flight times, etc. And here we go. It says on Monday. Here's when my flight leaves. Here's when it arrives. That's the hotel check-in. the event I'm going to and the second day as well when my flight actually departs and arrives. So, all of that now in this nicely put together timetable pulling in all the information from my notebook. Let me show you some other use cases that I've been using this for. So, coming back into a Google doc down here at the bottom, you'll see a button here called templates. Clicking on this, it gives you all these really nice looking templates from Google. And there's a lot you can choose between, but I'm going to use this one right here called to-do list. So, selecting this, I'll click on insert. And now we have this generic to-do list right here. But I will open up Gemini on the left and activate one of my gems. Let's do the travel gem again. I will select my California trip. Close that. And then coming down here, I will tell it create a to-do list of everything I need to do before my trip. And then here it created the checklist for me complete with the confirmation number which I've obviously blacked out so you can't cancel my hotel reservation on me. But all of that's in here nicely formatted. I can just then go ahead and accept it. What else have I been doing with this? Well, one of the cool things about Notebook LM is that you can actually add as a source audio files. So if you are at a conference for instance and there's a lot of speakers you can record all those audios and put them in here. Then coming over to Google Docs create a new one from a template and this time you can select meeting notes and so here we have that template and now you can add that notebook as a or into a gem and then that gem into Gemini here. So you can have all those meeting notes brought in here and summarized for you inside of Google Docs. Coming into Google Sheets, there are also a lot of great templates in here as well. So come up to file, new, you can click on from template gallery. There's a lot of great options in here. There's one for monthly budgets. So, selecting this one, I could see you creating a notebook where you upload screenshots of different receipts or photos of receipts and then it'll be able to take all that information for you and create a monthly budget and you can make sure that you're staying on track with your budget. And don't forget that when you're setting up your gems, you're not limited to just one notebook. coming in here and adding a notebook. I can select this one, this one, as many as I want. Insert all of them. So, I can now use that gem with all these different notebooks inside of Google Drive. This is particularly

helpful, I think, for students. Let's say during the semester, you create a new notebook for each subject that you're studying. Then, at the end of the year, you want all of them brought into one gem for the final exam. You can do that with this and then come over to Google Drive and actually have it create study guides for you using Google Docs or Google Sheets. So there you go. That's how you use Gemini Gems to bridge the gap between Notebook LM and Google Drive. No more switching back and forth between tabs. No more copying and pasting from notebooks. Just a clean connected workflow. But if you want to take this workflow up a level, then you need to learn how to master YouTube videos inside of Notebook LM. To do that, click on this video right here because chances are you are not using YouTube videos to their fullest extent inside your notebooks. So to learn all my tips and tricks, click on this video and I'll see you over there in just one second. Bye for now.