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Announcing your two most requested features: offline document editing and Drive for iOS

Google Docs — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 18:10:00 +0000

In April, we introduced Google Drive, a place where you can create, share, and keep all your stuff. Today at the Google I/O conference we announced two new ways to get things done in the cloud: offline editing for Google documents and a Drive app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

Offline document editing

No internet connection? No big deal. With offline editing, you can create and edit Google documents and leave comments. Any changes you make will be automatically synced when you get back online.

You can enable offline editing from the gear icon in Google Drive and find more detailed instructions for getting set up in the Help Center. Note that you’ll need the latest versions of Chrome or ChromeOS to edit offline. We’re also working hard to make offline editing for spreadsheets and presentations available in the future.

Google Drive for iOS

We launched the Drive app for Android phones and tablets a few weeks ago, and starting today, Google Drive is available for your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

With the Drive app, you can open PDFs, photos, videos, documents and anything else stored in your Drive while you're on the go. You can also search all your files, add collaborators to documents, and make files available offline to view them even without an internet connection. For blind and low-vision users, the app also works great in VoiceOver mode. Learn more about what you can do with the app in our Help Center.

Get Drive in the App Store for your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch running iOS 5.0+ and visit the Play Store to get the latest on your Android phone or tablet.

To learn more about Google Drive, visit drive.google.com/start.

Posted by Clay Bavor, Product Management Director

Hang out – live on air – with the Google Drive & Docs team

Google Docs — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 19:16:00 +0000

Cross-posted from the Google Enterprise blog.

Editor's note: Hangouts On Air are live video chats, interviews, or performances that are broadcast to Google+. We’ll host these broadcasts from time to time on the Google Enterprise Google+ page to give you the inside scoop on our business and products.

Last week, we hosted our first Hangout On Air from the Google Enterprise Google+ page with Jonathan Rochelle, Director of Product Management, Jeff Harris, Google Docs Product Manager, Teresa Wu, Google Docs Community Manager, and Eric Brunnett, Director of IT at Trump Hotel Collection.

During the conversation, Jonathan Rochelle told us the story of how Google Docs, Google Drive and cloud collaboration came to be. What was once an experiment to bring desktop software to the web is now a collaboration and productivity platform used by millions of people in their personal lives and at businesses, universities, non-profits and government agencies around the world.

Then, Eric Brunnett fielded questions about his company’s transition to Google Apps for Business and how they use shared Google documents and spreadsheets to streamline internal operations and communication. For example, they've moved away from relying on paper forms and long email chains by using Google Forms and Google Apps Scripts to create paperless processes that are more efficient and more trackable.

Last, Jeff Harris demoed some Google Drive features like shared folders and Google documents features like the research pane and contextual spell check, showing how the power of the web is used in Google Apps.

Follow the Google Enterprise and Google Docs Google+ pages to watch future Hangouts On Air and stay up-to-date on the latest news.

Posted by Julia Harter, Google Enterprise team

Collaborate and edit anywhere with the updated Google Docs for Android

Google Docs — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 20:02:00 +0000

As I was sitting on the ferry commuting to Google’s Sydney office this morning, two thoughts occurred to me. First, Australia is beautiful. If you’ve never been here, you really should visit. And second, it’s amazing how productive I can be with just my Android phone and an Internet connection. I was responding to email, reading news articles, and editing documents--just like I do at the office. Only the view was better!

We want to give everyone the chance to be productive no matter where they are, so today we’re releasing a new update to the Google Docs app for Android. We've brought the collaborative experience from Google Docs on the desktop to your Android device. You'll see updates in real time as others type on their computers, tablets and phones, and you can just tap the document to join in.

We also updated the interface to make it easier to work with your documents on the go. For example, you can pinch to zoom and focus on a specific paragraph or see the whole document at a glance. We also added rich text formatting so you can do things like create a quick bullet list, add color to your documents, or just bold something important. Watch the new Google Docs app in action:

If you want to hear about the latest Docs news or send us feedback on the new app, visit Google Docs on Google+.

Gotta run--I’ve got another ferry to catch!

Posted by: By Vadim Gerasimov, Software Engineer

Great presentations start with great discussions

Google Docs — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 18:59:00 +0000

Back in October, we released a preview of a brand new version of Google presentations, designed to make it easier to share ideas with others. We've been busy polishing the app based on your feedback and today we're excited to enable the new editor for all new presentations.

We’re also introducing a number of performance improvements and making it easier for you to collaborate by bringing the discussion feature you’ve used in documents to presentations.

With discussions in presentations, you’ll be able to: Comment on a shape or an entire slide to give context to your discussion. Send an email notification by adding someone to a comment.

Resolve comments to let collaborators know that they’ve been addressed, and to reduce clutter in your presentation. Plus, to make it easy to get feedback without giving up control of who can make changes, you can now give others the ability to comment on (but not edit) your presentation.

If you’d like to convert existing presentations to the new version of the editor, create a new presentation and import your slides by selecting Import slides from the File menu. To learn more about how to import your old presentations, check out these instructions.

With discussions and real time collaboration, we hope you’ll love working together in Google presentations. We’re rolling out these changes slowly over the next several hours. If you’d like to give us your feedback live, we’ll be hosting a Hangout tomorrow at 2:30 EST to talk about the latest updates to presentations. Stop by our Google+ page to find out how to participate.

Posted by: Michael Thomas, Software Engineer

Our team’s new Google+ Page

Google Docs — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 17:08:00 +0000

As our product and team have evolved over the past few years, we’ve enjoyed sharing news and notes with you on this blog. In turn, you’ve voiced your experiences with our products via blog comments, forum posts, tweets, and more. Hearing from you every day motivates us to build better products - that’s why we wanted to give you another more interactive place to join in on the conversation.

Starting today, we’re launching a new Google+ page dedicated to Google Docs. We’ll share info about feature launches, tips and tricks, behind the scenes snapshots, and more. You’ll have opportunities to Hangout with us, too.

We hope that our Google+ page will give you a fun new environment to share your feedback, learn about our products, and most importantly, connect with our team and our community of Docs users. Later today, I'll be doing our first of five Hangouts with members of the team - visit our page and add us to your circles to find out how you can participate.

Posted by: Teresa Wu, Community Manager

January in Review: Styles, Sparklines, Google+ sharing, and more

Google Docs — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:02:00 +0000

One of the best things about working on web apps like Google Docs is that it gives us the flexibility to frequently bring you new features and improvements. Starting this month, we’re going to make some small changes to how we communicate what’s been happening in the world of Docs. Instead of writing blog posts for each and every minor update, we're going to try bundling them together monthly to give you a detailed overview of our favorite features and a short list of other notable changes to make sure you don't miss out on anything new.

On that note, we’ve got a bunch of new features that launched today, as well as some great things that improved over the month of January.

Customizable styles in documents
Giving your document consistent and beautiful formatting should be easy. Before today, if you wanted to update all the Subtitles in your document to look a particular way, you had to change each of them one at a time. That’s too many steps. Now you can restyle all your regular paragraphs, headings, or titles with just a couple clicks. For example, if you want to update all the Subtitles in your document to be a particular size, set one Subtitle to that size, select it, right click and choose Update Subtitle to match selection. This will change all the Subtitles already in your document and automatically update the style for any new Subtitles you create. Plus, with the new Options menu in the styles dropdown, you can set the current document’s styles as the default for new documents or you can load your default styles into the current document.

Sparklines in spreadsheets and more charting options
In Google spreadsheets, we’ve added more charting options and support for sparklines to make it easier to communicate data. The new options give you a bunch of tools to create more sophisticated charts including different Y-axes on either side of the chart, formatting options for the axis and title text, and all sorts of other customization for how your lines, bars, or pies are displayed. We’ve also added sparklines, which let you display line or bar charts inside of cells and are handy for presenting and comparing data in a simple, bite-sized way. In the example below, we’ve used sparklines to plot currency exchange rates over a 30-day period.

Sharing forms on Google+
Sharing the forms you create in Google Docs with the right people shouldn’t be a hassle. Today we added a Google+ share to the form editor so that you can share your forms directly with your circles with just a couple clicks.

And there’s more…
On top of today’s new features, here are some changes from January that you may have missed:

Adding images to your docs from a high quality stock photo gallery. Simply go to Insert > Image, select Stock photos, and then search for the images that you want.

A more streamlined format for document discussion notifications that batches multiple discussions into a single email.
Quickly opening and selecting items from specific menus with keyboard accelerators. For example, when using Google Chrome, Ctrl+Option+E on a Mac and Alt+E on Windows or Linux will open the Edit menu.
Copying and pasting via the context (right click) menu in documents when you have the Chrome App installed.
Easily adding Google drawings or Google Groups discussions to a Google Site from the Insert menu.

Progress bars while uploading files to Google Sites.
Searching for text inside of PDFs in your documents list using Optical Character Recognition.

If you’d like to learn more about what we’ve been up to in January, I’ll be doing a Hangout On Air later this week this to talk about these changes and listen to your feedback. Stop by our Community Manager Teresa’s Google+ page on Thursday, February 9 at 12 p.m. EST to tune in.

Posted by: Jeff Harris, Product Manager

Updates to Google Docs app for Android: Offline access and improved tablet experience

Google Docs — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 18:45:00 +0000

There may be times when you don’t have an Internet connection on your Android device, but you still want access to a file you’ve saved in Google Docs. Now you can select any file in Google Docs to make it available offline. So regardless of whether you’re connected to the internet, you’re always connected to those files.

Even better, Google Docs automatically updates your offline files when you’re on Wi-Fi. You can also manually update files anytime you have a data connection by opening the file or tapping ‘Update’ from the Offline section of the app.


Make file available offline	Update online file

Make file available offline

Update offline file

For those of you with Android tablets, we’ve also improved the Google Docs reading experience. Now, when you open a Google document on your tablet while online, you’ll get a high-resolution version of the document. Swipe left and right to flip between pages, or use the slider at the bottom to page ahead quickly.

New reading layout on Android tablet

You can learn more about offline capabilities and the new reading layout in our Help Center.

Whether you’re offline or online, these improvements will make it easier to be productive from anywhere.

Posted by: Freeman Liu, Software Engineer

Google Docs and Sites 2011: A Year in Review

Google Docs — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 17:00:00 +0000

This year, we introduced over 100 new features to Google Docs to make creating, sharing, and collaborating in the cloud an even better experience.

In addition to the features you asked for the most, like page numbers and vertical merge, here are our team’s favorite improvements of 2011:

A new version of Google presentations with character-by-character collaboration - plus new transitions, animations, and themes
Comments in Google documents, followed by improvements including collapsible discussions, better email notifications, and a more detailed discussion pane
A Google Docs Android app available in 48 languages for searching, viewing, and sharing Google Docs on the go in 48 languages
Comment-only access in documents that allows others to view and comment on your doc without editing
Offline viewing for your documents and spreadsheets
Pivot tables in spreadsheets to process and summarize large data sets in seconds
Pagination in documents that provide visual page breaks on the screen
New printing options such as one-click CloudPrint from your mobile device
Page-level permissions in Google Sites for better control over who can view and edit your pages
Improved accessibility including new screen reader support and shortcuts that makes Google Docs more accessible and navigable for blind users
A new look across Google Docs and Sites for a more consistent web experience

Our team also loved hearing from you throughout the year: We had you ask us anything in a Reddit AMA, met our Docs and Sites Top Contributors, and held our first Docs Office Hours Google+ Hangout. Our interactions with you were constant reminders of why we build these products.

Let us know in the comments what your favorite features of 2011 were -- and what you’re wishing for in the new year. Thanks for following along -- we look forward to bringing you more in 2012.

Happy holidays from the Google Docs team!

Posted by: Jonathan Rochelle, Product Management Director

Create and celebrate with Google Docs templates for the holidays

Google Docs — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 19:30:00 +0000

This season, brighten up your holiday celebrations with some of our fun and festive Google Docs templates.

If you’re hosting a gift exchange with your friends, family, or colleagues, try our new Secret Santa gift exchange template by following these instructions. This template will allow you to quickly send out a form to collect the necessary information from participating guests. Then, using a Google script, the form will assign Secret Santas and send automated emails to guests with all the details - no folded paper scraps necessary.

Here are a couple of other ways to make your holiday planning easier:

Have guests RSVP to your holiday soiree
Organize or budget for your shopping list
Create a sheet of customized gift tags or mailing labels

Browse the template gallery for more ideas, or submit and share your own templates for others to use. Wishing you the best this holiday season!

Posted by: Teresa Wu, Community Manager

College Tips by Google: A new site for students

Google Docs — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 17:30:00 +0000

Are you applying to college, in the midst of your college years or getting ready for graduation? Wherever you are in your academic journey, Google has tips and tricks to help. Check out our new site, designed just for students, to learn how Google Docs and other Google products can help you stay on your A-game.

Posted by: David Kaufman, Cornell University ‘10 (Go Red!), Product Marketing Manager

Try Google presentations. No login required.

Google Docs — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 17:00:00 +0000

We recently launched a new version of Google presentations with many new features to help you create beautiful presentations together. We’ve added the new editor to our Docs demos to make it easier to test drive your presentation building skills.

Check out the new animations and transitions, get artsy with drawings, and show off your masterpiece to a friend or colleague. You can share the link in the demo with others and work on the same presentation together. No login required. No Google account needed. Just go to docs.google.com/demo to take it for a spin.

The new Google presentations continues to gradually roll out to all users. You can try it in the demo and if you like it, you can enable it in your Docs settings.

Posted by: Sarah Cooper, User Experience Designer

Bringing the very best of what we do to the veteran community

Google Docs — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 14:00:00 +0000

We believe that technology can be a force for good; one that builds and binds community. As a Googler, my proudest moments are when we take that technology and put it in the hands of people who can use it to communicate, collaborate, build and explore.

Today, on Veterans Day, I am proud to share a few Google tools and platforms for the military veteran community. They can be accessed on our website, Google for Veterans and Families, which was created by veterans and their family and friends, who work at Google. This single interface brings together Google products and platforms for servicemembers and their families. We believe it will be useful to all veterans, whether still in the service, transitioning out, or on a new path in their civilian lives. Here are some examples of what you’ll find on the site:

VetConnect - This tool helps servicemembers connect, communicate and share their experiences with others who have served using the Google+ platform.
Google Veterans Channel - A YouTube channel for discussion about military service for veterans, their families and the public. Veterans can share their experiences with each other as well as with civilians to help shed light on the importance and complexity of service. If you have not served, this is a great place to offer your thanks by uploading a tribute video.
Resume Builder powered by Google Docs - We found that Docs can be a particularly helpful tool to transitioning service members seeking employment. Resume Builder generates an auto-formatted resume that can be easily edited, saved and downloaded to share with potential employers.
Tour Builder powered by Google Earth (coming soon). A new way to tell your military story. Today, you can view some sample “tours”— 3D maps of veterans’ service histories, complete with photos and videos. Stay tuned for more details and updates on the Google Lat Long Blog.

It’s been a proud month for those of us here at Google who are veterans or family of veterans.

In October, 100 Googlers visited the Soldier and Family Assistance Center at West Point to conduct resume writing workshops for members of the Warrior Transition Unit. And, just two weeks ago, we traveled to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to teach wounded, ill and injured service members how to use Google tools to stay in touch with their loved ones while in recovery.

Finally, this week, we introduced the Veterans Job Bank in partnership with the Department of Veterans Affairs. The Veterans Job Bank is a customized job search engine in the National Resource Directory (NRD), which is powered by Google Custom Search technology and crawls the web for JobPosting markup from Schema.org to identify veteran-committed job openings.

Even playing a small part to serve those who have served has been an honor.

Carrie Laureno, Audience Evangelist and Founder, Google Veterans Network

Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog

Faces of Docs: Vance Vagell, User Interface Software Engineer

Google Docs — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 16:00:00 +0000

One of my favorite things about being the community manager on the Google Docs team is working alongside people with a myriad of backgrounds, interests, and talents. From learning of one of teammate’s pro cricket player past or another’s literary aspirations, I’m constantly discovering new things about the people I spend my workdays with. I thought you might enjoy reading about them, too--which is why we’re taking a cue from our friends at Gmail to bring you “Faces of Docs,” a series that will spotlight the people that make up our team.

Photo by: Antonella Pavese

Name:
Vance Vagell

What do you do on the Docs team and how long have you been at Google?
I lead a team of user experience (UX) prototypers. We build realistic-looking prototypes of new Google Docs features, so that our researchers can try them out with people. This lets us improve them before our engineers build the real thing. I’ve been here two years, but things move so quickly it may as well be 10.

What’s your typical day like?
I hop on the subway, read a few chapters of whatever sci-fi novel I’m working through (currently “Olympos” by Dan Simmons), and get to the office in about an hour.

Grab a coffee, then try to tackle my email inbox. Afterwards, I’m usually doing one of three things: building a prototype, preparing for a study, or running brainstorm and design sessions. My mind is usually at least one year in the future, although sometimes people force me to think about near-term problems.

What do you like most about what you do?
Watching someone enjoy a feature I’ve helped revise a few times—once we’ve finally gotten it right. I like being an advocate for what’s truly useful, and what people need. On the other hand, occasionally I get to work on bigger changes that help push technology in new directions, and that’s a blast too.

What’s the most challenging part of your role?
There are so many teams that want to see their ideas prototyped, that sometimes I have to put a few on the backburner. That said, we always prioritize, and then squeeze in a few “blue sky” projects so we keep moving forward and never get stuck in the status quo. We call a project “blue sky” when it’s unrealistic by today’s standards, but could be a great direction tomorrow.

What did you do before joining Google?
I’ve always worked in NYC—love the east coast (as I alienate myself from my west coast colleagues with this post). Started out as an indie game developer, then worked in voice technology for a few years. I was delighted to discover a posting for “User Interface Software Engineer” at Google NYC, and haven’t looked back since. I focus more on UX than engineering these days, but there’s an important intersection between the two that I represent.

What are the three Docs features you wouldn’t be able to live without?
Can I list ones that haven’t launched yet? Probably not. Okay, in that case: @-mentions in document comments that shoot off emails to people, Google Forms to quickly gather feedback, and real-time editing to bang out ideas as a group. These are all critical to my daily work.

What do you do when you’re not working on Docs?
Far too much computer gaming. Some of my favorites: Everquest (original and EQ2), Planetside, Eve Online, and City of Heroes.

Also love to go bird-watching. My favorite spot is Central Park. People are often surprised that you can spot over 20 bird species in a single afternoon there with a pair of binoculars. Did you know there’s a family of red-tailed hawks in the park that has reared several seasons of chicks now? Google “Pale Male”. On one outing, one of those hawks dove not more than a foot above my head to pick up a mouse beneath a tree across from me. Promptly carried it to a nearby branch and … dined. Very cool experience.

What kind of desk flair do you have?
Souvenirs from aquariums and zoos I’ve visited, and a photobooth print out of me and my partner at one of the Google NYC holiday parties. At last year’s, they had caricature artists, but I’m not ready to share that particular image of me yet. :)

What’s your pet peeve?
Apathy. Be passionate about something, and don’t be afraid to stand up for it.

What do you do in your downtime?
Between projects I like to catch up on UX blogs and papers. Some of my favorites are UX Matters, Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, and Don Norman’s essays.

What would your last meal be?
Definitely my partner Ray’s vegetable curry, it’s sublime, and you can’t beat home-cooked!

Posted by: Teresa Wu, Community Manager

Celebrating VisiCalc’s 32nd birthday with the inventors of the spreadsheet

Google Docs — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 19:30:00 +0000

On Wednesday, VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet available for personal computers, turned 32. We invited its inventors, Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston, to Hangout On Air with us to celebrate a product that’s paved the way for much of what the Google Docs team has been able to do today.

Users around the world tuned in to our live public stream as Dan and Bob shared the history of VisiCalc, their thoughts the spreadsheets of today, and their visions for the future. Watch the full video below.

And for you spreadsheets fanatics out there -- you can download and run a working copy of the original IBM PC VisiCalc spreadsheet program from 1981 at Dan Bricklin’s site.

Posted by: Teresa Wu, Community Manager

Another nonprofit shares its Google Sites story

Google Docs — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 15:12:00 +0000

Last week we told you about Children’s Radio Foundation using Google Docs to act like a file server for their organization. This week, we’re talking about another nonprofit, Grassroot Soccer, that uses Google Sites to host files for their organization. Learn more on the Google's Nonprofit blog.

Posted by: Carolyn Wendell, Consumer Experience Specialist

A fresh start for Google presentations

Google Docs — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 15:00:00 +0000

A year and a half ago, we released completely new document, spreadsheet and drawing editors. Google Docs has been picking up speed ever since with more than 60 new features and millions of new users. Today we’re rounding out the suite by previewing a new version of presentations with faster collaboration and more features.

A collaborative approach
Presentations are made to be shared—whether it’s presenting your thesis to your professors or inspiring colleagues at a conference. And the best presentations are made together, collaborating with others to build a compelling story that captivates your audience. Creating presentations together is easy because you can:

See exactly what others are working on with colorful presence markers
Edit with your team members simultaneously from different locations
Use revision history to see who made changes or to revert to earlier versions
Say hello, start a conversation or share new ideas using built-in chat

More than 50 new features
In the new presentations, we’ve added many of your most requested features, including:

Transitions to move between slides with simple fades or spicier 3D effects
Animations to add emphasis or to make your slides more playful
New themes to create beautiful presentations with distinct visual styles
Drawings to build new designs, layouts, and flowcharts within a presentation
Rich tables with merged cells and more options for adding style to your data

What’s next
We’re gradually rolling out the new presentations. To get an early start, click on the gear icon in your document list, and select Document settings. Then, from the editing tab, check the box to “Create new presentations using the latest version of the presentation editor.” Learn more about getting started with the new presentation editor over at our Help Center.

Many of the new features were built using technologies that are only available in modern browsers. If you’re using an older browser you’ll be able to view, but not edit, the new presentations.

With today’s launch, the Google Docs suite is now built on a single, solid foundation. Now that the groundwork is in place, you can expect more useful and collaborative features, delivered faster than ever before.

Posted by: Steven Saviano, Software Engineer

South African nonprofit benefits from Google Docs and Sites

Google Docs — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 18:00:00 +0000

We recently met with two nonprofits to learn more about how they use Google Docs and Sites to better manage and share files across their organizations. Today, we're sharing the story of Children Radio's Foundation (CRF), a nonprofit organization based in South Africa. Tom Henry, a CRF volunteer, sits down with the Google for Nonprofits team and tells us why collections and sharing are two of his favorite features in Google Docs. Learn more on Google's Nonprofit Blog.

Posted by: Carolyn Wendell, Consumer Experience Specialist

An enhanced Google Docs experience on mobile tablets

Google Docs — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 16:45:00 +0000

Earlier this year, we introduced the Google Docs app for Android. Since then, many users have downloaded the app and enjoyed the benefits of being able to access, edit and share docs on the go.

Today’s update to the app makes Google Docs work better than ever on your tablet. With an entirely new design, we’ve customized the look to make the most of the larger screen space on tablets. The layout includes a three-panel view, which allows you to navigate through filters and collections, view your document list, and see document details, all at once.

Looking at the details panel on the right side, you can see a thumbnail to preview a document and its details before opening it. From the panel, you can see who can view or edit any doc.

New 3-panel view for improved browsing

Autocomplete makes sharing with others on the go even easier

These features are now available in 46 languages on tablet devices with Android 3.0+ (Honeycomb) and above.

You can download the app from the Android Market and let us know what you think in the comments or by posting on the forum. Learn more by visiting the help center.

Posted by: David Loxton, Product Manager

Experience the new look of Docs and Sites

Google Docs — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 16:59:00 +0000

Starting today, we’re rolling out the new design for Google Docs and Sites to everyone.

We began rolling out these improvements in early August with the documents list and have since upgraded our entire collaboration suite. You may have noticed that our new look matches other recent Google visual updates, which aim to bring a consistent, improved experience across our products.

Your content is what’s important, and we aim to highlight it with this new design. You’ll see clean menus and toolbars, prominent action buttons, and colorful presence that pops when you’re editing with others.

To people who opted-in to try the new look — thank you. Based on your feedback, here are some of the improvements we made:

We made it clearer that your document is always saved, by showing “Saving...” right after you make a change and then “All changes saved” once it’s fully saved.

We added an icon to the Share button so you can tell if your document is shared at a glance.

If you’re looking for options that were previously under the Share button (e.g. “Email as attachment...”), you can now find these in the File menu.

By default, the documents list automatically fits a comfortable number of documents on your screen (large desktop monitors show more, smaller laptop screens show fewer). We also added density options to give you more control:

If you’re not quite ready for the new look, choose Help > Use the classic look (or in the gear menu, for some products). We’ll support the classic look for at least a few more weeks, but encourage you to use the new look, get settled in, and send us any feedback you have.

We hope you enjoy this refreshed experience.

Posted by: Vance Vagell, User Interface Software Engineer

Visualize your data with charts in Google Sites

Google Docs — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 13:04:00 +0000

Ever since we launched the chart editor in Google spreadsheets, many of you have asked us to integrate charts into Google Sites as well. Today we are making this possible. Now you can display charts in your Sites by going to Insert Menu and choosing Charts in edit mode.

Once you select a spreadsheet, the editor picks existing charts from the spreadsheet to embed into a Site.

You can also create a chart by specifying the sheet and range and customize the chart by changing various properties such as color, axes, labels and more. Choose which chart type best expresses your data or let the chart editor recommend one for you.

You can decide to choose between two modes Live and Snapshot to show the data.

Live provides you with dynamic charts. Whenever the chart is loaded in the Site, the chart will display the most recent data in the spreadsheet. This is very useful in cases when the spreadsheet data is updated manually or using a script.

Snapshot means just that. It’s a snapshot at a point in time, so the chart will store and display the exact same data, regardless of whether you make changes to the underlying data sheet.

Changes made to charts in Sites are independent to the specific chart, so the same spreadsheet data can be applied across multiple charts.

To learn more about how to express your data more visually with Sites, visit the help center. Be sure to let us know what you think in the comments.

Posted by: Hillel Maoz, Software Engineer

This week in Docs: Import/export and paste special improvements

Google Docs — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 15:04:00 +0000

Yesterday, we announced the vertical merge feature in Google spreadsheets, and today we’re happy to share two new features that we hope will make analyzing data a little more efficient.

More import and export support in Google spreadsheets
Now you can convert most pivot tables between Microsoft Excel files and Google spreadsheets for powerful data analysis in whatever file format you prefer. Additionally, filters that help you better visualize and organize your data are now supported in our import and export conversion tools.

To import a pivot table you created in Microsoft Excel, click the File menu in Google spreadsheets, and select import, then select the file from the import options, and click the import button. If you’ve created a pivot table in Google spreadsheets, go to File in the spreadsheet, then click Download As, and choose Excel.

More paste special options in Google spreadsheets
Sometimes you need to copy data in cells that have lots of formatting and formulas, but you don’t always want to paste everything in the cell. For instance, you may want to copy and paste the data in a range of cells, but not the borders that you placed around the cells.

We’ve added four new paste special options including: paste all cell contents except borders, formulas only, data validation only, or conditional formatting only. You can find these new options in a list under “Paste Special” in the Edit menu of Google spreadsheets.

We hope these latest features make working with Google spreadsheets more efficient and productive. As always, let us know what you think in the forum or in the comments.

Posted by: Dan Gundrum, Product Manager

Merge cells vertically in Google spreadsheets

Google Docs — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 17:05:00 +0000

There are many times when you want to format your spreadsheets in a certain way to make your data easier to read and understand. Starting today, we’ve extended the merge functionality to let you create vertical merges across several rows of data.

In the spirit of the NFL season, let’s say you want to host a football tournament for your friends. To make it easier for them to cast their votes on the winning team, you organize the NFL teams by conference and division in a Google spreadsheet. Using vertical merges, you can assign headers to sets of rows. Simply select the set of cells you’d like to merge, then click on the down arrow next to the merge icon, and select Merge vertically.

In the NFL spreadsheet, you’ll see that some of the team names don’t fit on one line in the width of the cells of Column C.

To improve the formatting, select the cells across all the rows of teams in the AFC (rows 2-17) and 2 columns (C and D) and click Merge horizontally. You’ll have 16 merged cells that span 2 columns for better formatting.

After applying vertical merges to all of the conference and division headers and horizontal merges across the team names in each conference, you’re ready to share with your friends for the tournament!

To undo a merge action, select a merged cell and click Unmerge in the drop-down menu.

We hope you enjoy customizing the formatting of your spreadsheets with this feature. Let us know what you think in the comments.

Posted by: Jakov Krolo, Software Engineer Intern

+1 button in Google Sites

Google Docs — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 16:21:00 +0000

We have been thrilled with the response to the launch of the +1 button on websites all across the web, but we also heard that you’d like a simple way to add the +1 button to your own Google Sites. Adding the +1 button to your site will allow your visitors to recommend it to their friends and contacts, which helps more people discover it via their personalized search results.

Starting today, you can add the +1 button to any individual page by choosing +1 Button from the Insert menu, or you can add it to your site’s sidebar and have it appear on every page instantly by editing your Site Layout under Manage Site.

Try it out and let us know what you think in the forum.

Posted by: Michael Verrilli, Software Engineer

Improved Accessibility in Google Docs and Sites

Google Docs — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 01:54:00 +0000

Today we announced some of the updates we’ve released recently to make Google’s applications more accessible to the blind community. For Google Docs and Sites, we’re pleased to announce new keyboard shortcuts and better screen reader support for our blind users.

Screen reader support in Google Docs and Sites
To help blind users read, edit and navigate content, Google Docs (including documents list, documents and spreadsheets) and Sites now support two screen readers: JAWS and ChromeVox. Here are a few examples of how screen readers work in Google Docs and Sites:

In documents, you’ll hear feedback when you format text or insert tables, lists or comments in your document.
In spreadsheets, you’ll hear the cell’s location, contents and comments when moving between cells.
In both documents and spreadsheets, you’ll hear feedback as you navigate to areas outside the main content area, such as the menu bar, chat pane and dialog boxes.
In your documents list, you’ll hear feedback when you upload or download a file, organize collections or move between files in your documents list.
In Sites, you’ll hear feedback as you navigate and manage your sites, create and edit pages, and navigate through menus and dialog boxes.

For a complete list of screen reader-supported features and instructions for how to use them, visit the Docs and Sites help centers.

New keyboard shortcuts
We’ve also added new keyboard shortcuts to make it easier to use Google Docs and Sites. In your documents list, for example, you can use the up and down arrow keys to move through the files in the list, and you can open the selected document by hitting Enter. For a complete list of keyboard shortcuts, please refer to the help center articles for spreadsheets, documents, documents list and Sites.

With these new accessibility features, we hope to make it easier for everyone to use Google Docs and Sites. Please use this form to share your feedback directly with the accessibility team so we can continue to improve our products.

Posted by: Jeff Harris, Product Manager

This week in Docs: Format painter, Google Fusion Tables, and drag & drop images

Google Docs — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 17:09:00 +0000

This week in Docs, we’re introducing three new tools that put the fun in functional.

Format painter in Google documents

First, we’ve added a format painter to help you copy formatting within Google documents. The new format painter allows you to copy the style of your text, including font, size, color and other formatting options and apply it somewhere else in your document. To use the format painter, select the text for the formatting you want to copy, press the paintbrush button in your toolbar, and then select the text where you want to apply that formatting.

If you double-click on the format painter icon, you’ll enter a mode that lets you select multiple sections of text so you can apply the same formatting to each section.

You can also use keyboard shortcuts for format painting. To copy the style of your selected text, press Ctrl+Option+C for Mac or Ctrl+Alt+C for Windows. To apply any copied styles to whatever text you have selected, press Ctrl+Option+V for Mac or Ctrl+Alt+V for Windows.

Google Fusion Tables in documents list

With this week’s update, we’re also integrating Google Fusion Tables into your documents list. Google Fusion Tables is a data management web application that makes it easy to gather, visualize and collaborate on data online. Now you’ll be able to store and share your Fusion Tables with the rest of the files in your documents list.

Recently, people have used Google Fusion Tables to:

Visualize evacuation zones for New York City during Hurricane Irene
Host data sets made public by the State of California
Gather data from local flu shot clinics for Google Flu Vaccine Finder
Map shelters and road status during the tsunami crisis in Japan

Go to Create new > Table from your documents list menu to get started visualizing or sharing tables of data in .csv, .xls or .kml files.

We're working on making Google Fusion Tables available to Google Apps customers and will let you know as soon as they are. Take a tour to learn more about Google Fusion Tables.

Drag & drop images in Google drawings

We also made it easier to add images from your desktop to Google drawings. If you’re using the latest version of Chrome, Safari, or Firefox, you can now drag an image from your desktop and drop it directly in the drawing canvas.

Give these tools a try and let us know what you think in the comments.

Posted by: Micah Lemonick, Software Engineer

Updated 9/13 to add shortcuts for Windows

Comment-only access in Google documents

Google Docs — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 16:00:00 +0000

In the past several months, we’ve added new discussion and commenting features to improve collaboration in Google documents. As an engineer, I often create docs with design concepts and send them to my team to review and provide feedback, and we use the commenting features to facilitate these discussions. Sometimes, I want to let team members view and make comments without allowing them to directly edit my document.

Over the next several days, we're releasing a new sharing option so that you can let people view and add comments to your documents without giving them edit access. To give comment-only access to your document, click on the Share button. From there, add in the contact you’d like to share your document with, and select Can comment.

You can also choose to give comment-only access to anyone with the link or anyone on the web by changing the sharing settings within the document. To do this, click Change in the sharing settings window and change visibility options to Public on the web or Anyone with the link, then change the access options to Can comment.

Similarly, if you’re using a Google Apps account, click Change in the sharing settings and select either “People at [your domain] who have the link can access” or “People at [your domain] can find and access.” Then change access option to Can comment.

Users that have comment-only access can view your document and add comments throughout -- without being able to change the content of the document directly.

We hope this latest feature in discussions helps you get the feedback you need while providing you with more control over the content in your docs. So comment away and tell us what you think -- below or in the forum.

Posted by: Sarah Wu, Software Engineer

What Happened Wednesday

Google Docs — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 15:16:00 +0000

Not our best week. On Wednesday we had an outage that lasted one hour and meant that document lists, documents, drawings and Apps Scripts were inaccessible for the majority of our users. We use Google Docs ourselves every day, so we feel your pain and are very sorry.

So what happened? The outage was caused by a change designed to improve real time collaboration within the document list. Unfortunately this change exposed a memory management bug which was only evident under heavy usage.

Every time a Google Doc is modified, a machine looks up the servers that need to be updated. Due to the memory management bug, the lookup machines didn’t recycle their memory properly after each lookup, causing them to eventually run out of memory and restart. While they restarted, their load was picked up by the remaining lookup machines - making them run out of memory even faster. This meant that eventually the servers couldn’t properly process a large fraction of the requests to access document lists, documents, drawings, and scripts which led to the outage you saw on Wednesday.

Our automated monitoring noticed that attempts to access documents were failing at an increased rate, and alerted us 60 seconds later after the failure rate increased sharply. The engineering teams diagnosed the problem, determined that it was correlated with the feature change, and started rolling it back 23 minutes after the first alert. In parallel, we doubled the capacity of the lookup service to mitigate the impact of the memory management bug. The rollback completed 24 minutes later, and 5 minutes after that the outage was effectively over as the additional capacity restored normal function.

Since resolution, we have been assembling and scrutinizing the timeline of this event, and have assembled a list of steps which will both reduce the chance of a future event, decrease the time required to notice and resolve a problem, and limit the scope which any single problem can affect. We intend to take all these steps; some are not easy, but we're committed to keeping Google's services exceptionally reliable. In the meantime, rest assured that we take every outage very very seriously, and as always we'll post a full incident report of what happened to the Apps Dashboard once our investigation is complete. Again, we apologize for the inconvenience and frustration which the outage has caused.

Posted by: Alan Warren, Engineering Director

Tips & Tricks: Using the new Subtotal function in Google spreadsheets

Google Docs — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 18:30:00 +0000

This week, we added the Subtotal function to our list of functions in Google spreadsheets. One of the benefits of the Subtotal function is that it works well with AutoFilters by only using unfiltered data when performing calculations (other functions such as Sum include filtered data calculations). Subtotal also lets you change what function you’re performing on those values very quickly, by selecting an item from a drop-down list. See our help article for details.

This versatile function is often used by accountants, finance professionals, and business consultants. It can also be extremely convenient for any user -- let’s show you why.

Say that you’re helping to plan your family’s annual Labor Day beach weekend. You want to decide how many hot dogs and veggie dogs to buy. To figure this out, you create a Google spreadsheet that includes all your family members, their meat preferences, and the number of hot dogs everyone ate at the past several family gatherings:

To quickly count how many veggie dogs you need to buy based off the number of veggie dogs eaten last month, add a filter to the columns , sort to “Yes” only in Column C, and type in this Subtotal function underneath the table:

=SUBTOTAL(109, F2:F14)

Cells F2 through F14 show the number of hot dogs each family member ate last month. “109” is the code that references the Sum function (“9” would also work). Typing in a regular Sum function in this case (=SUM(F2:F14)) would have added all dogs, veggie or not, whereas Subtotal ignores hodogs which have been filtered.

Another neat feature of the Subtotal function is that the function code (such as “109” above) can easily be changed to refer to different operations like Average, Minimum, and Maximum. As a result, Subtotal can be used to condense a number of calculations into a small space.

Let’s say you want to see not only the total number of hot dogs eaten each summer month, but also the average number eaten. Rather than creating two different functions (Sum and Average) for each month, you can use Subtotal.

In an open cell -- let’s use B15 -- you would create a drop-down list with the codes for the Sum and Average function (109 and 101 respectively).
And under the column for each month, you would write a Subtotal function, but reference cell B15 instead of typing in a code.

For June, therefore, your function would read: =SUBTOTAL(B15, D2:D14)

Every time you change which code appears in cell B15 through the drop-down, the values under each month will change, showing either the total or the average number of hot dogs eaten by your family with just one click.

We hope the Subtotal function makes your data analysis a lot easier -- and maybe even more fun.

Posted by: Lai Kwan Wong, Software Engineer

Access Google Docs with FedEx Office Print Online

Google Docs — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 18:00:00 +0000

With Google Docs, you have instant access to your files anytime -- whether you’re at the office on your desktop, on the go with your mobile phone, or at home on your laptop.

When you need to print your documents from anywhere, FedEx Office® is now making it even easier with a Google Docs feature. With FedEx Office Print Online, you can upload and access your Google Docs directly from their site, choose what file types to print and customize your printing options. Once you’ve completed your order, you can choose to pick up the prints at a local FedEx Office retail location or have them delivered right to your door.

So whether you’re creating brochures for your business or a mid-term project to share with classmates, the power of the web helps you access your files from anywhere and even get them into your hands, literally.

Posted by: Teresa Wu, Community Manager

This week in Docs: Page numbers in documents and one click to Google Cloud Print

Google Docs — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 21:45:00 +0000

This week in Docs, we’re announcing page numbers and page count in documents, plus one click to Google Cloud Print -- a couple features that we hope will save you time and energy.

Page numbers and page count in documents
Today we’re making it possible to add page numbers and page count to your documents. You can use the Insert > Page number option to add page numbers to the header or footer of your documents.

We’ve also added the option to insert page count, which displays the total number of pages in your document. You can combine the page number and the page count to create more advanced headers and footers. For example, to create the “Page 3 of 15” header below, take the following steps:

Go to Insert > Header.
Click the right align icon in the toolbar to move the cursor to the upper right corner.
Type the word “Page”.
Go to Insert > Page number > Top of page to add page numbers to the headers of your document.
Type the word “of”.
Go to Insert > Page count to add the total number of pages to the headers of your document.

Print with Google Cloud Print in just one click
Earlier this year, we announced Google Cloud Print for mobile documents. Google Cloud Print is a service in Beta that allows printing from any app on any device, OS or browser without the need to install any software.

We’re making it easier to print on the go directly from your mobile documents list in Google Docs. Simply select a document from the documents list and click on Actions > Print from the bottom toolbar. Currently, you can use Cloud Print in Google documents and spreadsheets.

To get started, you’ll need to connect your printer to Google Cloud Print. To learn more, check out the new site.

We hope you’ll take advantage of these latest features. Stay tuned for the next This Week in Docs.

Posted by: Chris Graves, Software Engineer Intern

The Google Docs app for Android now with Web Clipboard and in 46 languages

Google Docs — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 16:30:00 +0000

In April, we introduced the Google Docs app for Android, which allows you to access and create new docs on the go, directly from an app on your Android phone. Since then, we’ve continued to work on ways to improve your mobile experience, and I’m excited to share a couple of new updates that we hope will do just that.

Starting today, you can easily take pictures with your Android phone and insert them into a Google document, using the new Web Clipboard feature. Here’s how:

1. From the Docs widget on your phone, tap the camera icon.

2. Snap a photo then select Send to Web Clipboard and press OK.

3. Open any Google document from your computer. Click the Web Clipboard icon and select the item to paste into your doc.

A couple of other new features for the Android app include improved open and send options. You can open your documents with any compatible viewer application or send a doc as an attachment through email or another app on your phone.

Last but certainly not least, we’re making the Docs app available in 45 additional languages so more users around the world can access, share and edit on the go. Here’s an example of what the app looks like in German:

You can grab the app from Android Market and learn more by visiting the help center. As always, let us know what you think in the comments or on the forum.

Posted by: Tobias Thierer, Software Engineer

How I use Google Docs as a student

Google Docs — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 16:00:00 +0000

Shep McAllister is a rising senior at Trinity University in San Antonio, TX, and editor of the popular student blog HackCollege. For the past several years, he has done his college coursework exclusively on Google Docs, and today he shares his five favorite uses for the platform in the classroom.

When I started out at Trinity University, I didn’t know much about Google Docs and relied heavily on desktop word processors. As I became increasingly frustrated with these programs crashing mid-sentence, I thought I’d give Google Docs a try. But what started as an experiment to test Google Docs for group projects and class notes quickly became a permanent solution for all of my schoolwork, and I haven’t looked back once. Here are a few of my favorite uses of Google Docs in college:

1. Work together on group projects
Before I started using Google Docs, group projects were a nightmare. A co-authored paper would fragment into a dozen different documents. Group presentations became last minute scrambles to get combine slides. Any information sharing about our project took place in splintered email threads. With Google Docs, my class groups are able work together on the same presentation or paper simultaneously while sharing links and ideas in a separate doc. The discussions feature released earlier this year made collaboration even simpler.

2. Take notes collaboratively
My classmates and I always get together near exam time to combine our notes and share ideas, so why not do it in real time? I work with friends to take in-class notes on a single Google doc, allowing everyone to come away with a more thorough set of notes than they could have written individually. I discuss this concept in more detail on my blog, HackCollege.

3. Convert PDFs and handouts to searchable text with Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
As a student, I get a lot of assigned reading as PDF files. Unfortunately, most of them are low-quality scans from the library, which makes it hard to search through them for keywords or make annotations. With Google Docs’ OCR capabilities, I’m able to upload a low-quality PDF and receive an editable text document in return. This also works well for any important handouts professors give out in class -- I just scan the handout and upload to Google Docs, keeping all of my class material in one place.

4. Save major assignments in the cloud
Writing important papers in Google Docs allows me to access my assignments and papers from any computer, anywhere. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been stuck in the library without my laptop, or only have my smartphone handy. With Google Docs, it doesn’t matter, because all of my assignments are stored in the cloud, meaning I don’t have to be tethered to my laptop to get work done. This saved my sanity (and GPA) during finals last semester, when my computer crashed and was out of commission for over a week. Luckily, there was no need to panic, because I knew my final papers and study guides were tucked safely in the Google Docs cloud, instead of my dying hard drive.

5. Collect information from a group with forms
Before I started using Google Docs, organizing my classmates for a group dinner or campus event was a nightmare. Now, I use Google Docs to create web forms to send to my friends and classmates. My friends have gotten involved too, using it for keeping track of club participation, voting on housing for their fraternity’s beach weekend, and even conducting surveys for major research projects.

Posted by: Shep McAllister, HackCollege.com Blogger & Trinity University Student

The Google Docs team beats the heat at our summer picnic

Google Docs — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 16:00:00 +0000

Hello from the Google Docs team! It's been a hot summer in many parts of the United States, so our New York based team escaped to Governor's Island for a refreshing afternoon of team bonding.

Wishing all of you a happy (and collaborative!) month of August -- wherever you are.

Posted by: Teresa Wu, Community Manager

Better control in Google Sites with page-level permissions

Google Docs — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 19:30:00 +0000

Today we’re introducing page-level permissions, a new feature that will allow you to control who can view and edit your Google Site on a page by page basis.

Using page-level permissions, you can make some pages private for certain users while keeping other pages public for everyone to see. For instance, let’s say you have a Google Site that you’ve shared with your team and your manager. You can allow your team to see one set of pages, let your manager edit another set of pages, and keep yet another set of pages private for only you.

Only site owners have the ability to enable this feature, which is turned off by default for new and existing sites. To turn on page-level permissions, go to More Actions > Sharing and Permissions.

From there, click Enable page-level permissions. Then, in the dialog box, click Turn on page-level permissions.

Once page-level permissions is enabled, you’ll have three options to choose from:

allow a page to inherit all of your site-level permissions
elect to include future site-level changes to a page
prevent a page from inheriting any future changes made at the site-level

Using page-level permissions should give you greater control over who can edit and access your Google site. To learn more about setting page-level permissions, take a look at our getting started guide. Let us know what you think in our support forums.

Posted by: Eric Zhang, Software Engineer

Making Google spreadsheet functions easier to discover and use

Google Docs — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 17:00:00 +0000

From the simple SUM function to GoogleLookup, Google spreadsheets continues to add features that help you power through data. But sometimes it can be a challenge to find the one you need to use or figure out the right way to use it. We’ve made the following improvements to help you quickly discover and understand all of the powerful functions that Google spreadsheets has to offer.

Help snippets directly in spreadsheets
You shouldn’t have to interrupt your work to figure out how to build a particular formula, which is why we’re bringing help documentation directly into Google spreadsheets.

As soon as you start typing a formula into a cell, you’ll notice an auto-suggest box with the name and syntax of the function you might be looking for. Mouse over any of the suggested functions, and you’ll see a description that explains the function, its syntax, and how it’s used. You’ll also see links to related content and a link to the complete list of functions.

Auto-suggest displays syntax and help documentation for all 300+ available functions and even recognizes nested functions, making it easier to build complex formulas.

Revamped help documentation in the Google Docs Help Center
We’ve also completely rebuilt our help documentation for Google spreadsheet functions with invaluable input from some of our most active forum users such as ahab, yogia1, Ted J, A.P.L, MarinusP, and other forum Top Contributors. Here’s a look at what’s new:

A completely new table for browsing help documentation for all 300+ Google spreadsheets functions. This table is easy to browse, sort or search. To view the table, you can visit the Google Docs Help Center, click the complete list of functions link in the auto-suggest help snippets, or select Help > Function list in any Google spreadsheet.
Help documentation for nearly 60 new functions and formulas.
More detailed help documentation, including better instructions for some of our most sophisticated and complex functions.

All of these improvements are now in English, and will be available in additional languages in the coming weeks. So take advantage of these new resources at your fingertips and you’ll be a Google spreadsheets ninja in no time.

Posted by: Michael Schidlowsky, Software Engineer

Give your templates a refresh in the new document editor

Google Docs — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 16:00:00 +0000

We continue to add new features like pagination and discussions to the new document editor, and we want to make sure you always have access to all of the latest functionality -- whether you’re creating a new doc from scratch or using a template from the gallery. As part of this effort, we’re removing Google Docs templates created in the old document editor from the Google Docs template gallery.

Starting on September 30th, old style templates will remain accessible to their owners and to anyone who the template has been shared with, but they will no longer be visible in the public gallery. This will only apply to the public Google Docs template gallery; templates created in Google Apps domains will not be affected by this change.

You can ensure your templates remain in the gallery by converting them to the new document editor. Just follow these simple steps:

Open the document from your documents list
Click the Preview link at the top of the document to see what it looks like in the new editor
From inside the preview window, click the Update this document link

When old style templates are removed from the gallery on September 30th, the template owners will still be able to restore the templates to the gallery by upgrading them to the new editor.

By making this change, we hope to bring the best possible experience to more documents.

Posted by: Jeff Harris, Product Manager

Try out a new look and keyboard shortcuts for your documents list

Google Docs — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 18:13:00 +0000

As part of our effort to provide an improved and consistent web experience across Google products, we’d like to invite you to try out a new look for the documents list that's rolling out to users over the next few days. If it's available to you, you'll be able to preview the new look by clicking on Try the new look under the gear icon in the upper right. You’ll be able to return to the classic look using the same menu.

Classic look

New look

While using the new interface, you may want to see more of the items in your documents list on the screen at one time. To do this, click on the gear icon in the upper right and go to Documents settings. Under Row height, you’ll be able to select the option to use a denser view.

As part of this new look, we’ve also added keyboard shortcuts to help you easily navigate your documents list without a mouse. For example, when selecting a document, use the ⇓ (down arrow) to move down the list and the ⇑(up arrow) to move back up. Once you find the item you're looking for, type a to open the Actions menu. Then, use the ⇑ and ⇓ arrow keys to navigate the Actions menu, and hit to select an action.

The Create new shortcuts are also convenient for creating new docs while you’re working. Simply hit Shift + T to create a new text document, Shift + S to create a spreadsheet, or Shift + C to create a new collection.

Can't remember all those shortcuts? Just remember the question mark. Type ? when you’re not in the search bar, and a window will appear showing all available shortcuts.

These shortcuts will only be available if you’re using the new interface. Keep an eye out for more changes to the new interface as it evolves, and make sure to tell us what you think about the new design in this brief feedback form so we can continue to improve your experience.

Posted by: Ted Chen, Software Engineer

Use new Google spreadsheets charts in your documents and drawings

Google Docs — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 16:00:00 +0000

Today, we’re releasing a few new types of charts, plus a feature that allows you to copy your charts from spreadsheets into documents and drawings. Sound good? Bet your bar chart it does. Let’s show you how it works.

Start by creating a chart. Then, select the chart by clicking on it once, which will display the chart’s name. Click the chart name or the arrow next to it to open the dropdown menu of chart actions. From the menu, select Copy chart.

Next, open the document or drawing where you’d like to insert the chart and position the cursor where you’d like the chart to go. Use the Web Clipboard dropdown menu, as shown below, to locate your copied chart.

As you hover the mouse over the menu item for the chart, a thumbnail will be displayed. Clicking on the chart item will paste it into the document as an image, which can then be resized, aligned, etc. Here’s an example of a chart pasted into a document:

Note that the chart snapshots are just that -- they are images of the chart at the time of copying and therefore do not update as the spreadsheet data changes. If you need to update a chart, just copy and paste it again.

The name of the chart shown in the Web Clipboard menu is the same as the chart’s name in the spreadsheet, which you can easily change from the default name, “Chart 1.” To rename a chart, select Edit chart from the chart’s action menu, and enter a new name on the Customize tab. This is particularly handy when working with charts from multiple spreadsheets.

We’ve also introduced a few new types of charts to Google spreadsheets. We now support candlestick charts and combo charts (which allow you to show columns, lines, and area lines all on the same graph). You can also use the GeoMap chart to insert a data-driven map of the world, a continent, or a country into your spreadsheet. Our TreeMap chart, meanwhile, should be exciting for the statisticians and logicians among you.

We hope this makes creating great documents easy as pie (charts, of course).

Posted by: Ben Margolin, Software Engineer

This week in Docs: Copying drawings and better right-to-left table support

Google Docs — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 17:51:00 +0000

This week in Docs, we have a couple of new features that we hope make your life easier (and more visual). Read on.

Copying and pasting drawings across docs
Starting today, we’re adding support for the web clipboard to the embedded drawing editor so that you can work with drawings within documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. This means that you can now copy shapes from one document and paste them into existing drawings in another doc. You can also use the web clipboard to move a drawing from a document into the standalone drawing editor.

To try this out, open a new document and go to Insert > Drawing to create a drawing in the embedded drawing editor. Click the web clipboard icon and Copy shapes to web clipboard.

Open another doc that you want to paste the drawing into. Click the web clipboard icon and hover to preview the available items -- then, click to paste when you’ve located the drawing you’d like to use.

Better support for right-to-left tables
We’ve also made an improvement to tables that will be useful for Hebrew and Arabic users. If you’ve enabled right-to-left controls from your docs list settings, you’ll now have an option to create tables that are visually right-to-left. This means that the first cell in the table will be in the upper right and that tabbing through the table will move you to the left and down. You can modify a table’s directionality from the table properties dialog.

We hope you enjoy these new features. As always, let us know what you think in the forums and stay tuned for more updates in the next This week in Docs blog post.

Posted by: Aharon Lanin, Software Engineer

This week in Docs and Sites: A spreadsheets shortcuts menu, PPTX support and more

Google Docs — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 19:30:00 +0000

This week, we’re introducing a number of enhancements to Google Docs and Sites: a spreadsheets shortcuts menu, support for PPTX conversion, a new RSS gadget, and improved mobile rendering for Sites.

Spreadsheets shortcuts
Although shortcuts have long been available in your Google spreadsheets, we've added a shortcuts menu to spreadsheets to make them easier to find -- saving you even more time. Hit Ctrl+/ (or Cmd+/ on a Mac) to pull up the list of shortcuts and learn new ways to sharpen your spreadsheet skills. Remember that shortcuts can vary depend on the operating system and browser you're using -- the example below is the menu you’d see if you were using a Chrome browser on a Mac.

Support for conversion of PPTX files to Google presentations
Starting today, you can convert PPTX files to Google presentations by either uploading the file from your desktop or converting the file from your documents list. Just follow the same simple steps as you normally would when converting files to Google Docs formats.

Better customization for your RSS Gadget in Sites
We’ve also added a new RSS gadget for Google Sites to our “Featured” gallery.

The new RSS gadget gives you complete control over the appearance of the gadget: You can customize any aspect of the feed, including font, color, size, number of items to display, and post length.

To set your gadget, go to Insert > More Gadgets > Featured, and look for RSS Feed.

Improved mobile rendering
After we released our initial version of Google Sites automatic mobile rendering, you enabled the option for over 50,000 sites, making it clear that you’re looking for a better way to easily publish content for mobile devices.

Based on what you’ve told us, we’re adding the additional behaviors to make automatic mobile rendering on Google Sites even better, including:

Images and header logos automatically scale in mobile mode
Gadgets and text boxes have widths that fit mobile devices
Pages with multi-column layouts stack columns vertically on mobile


Before	After

Thanks for continuing to let us know what you think about our products -- these changes wouldn’t be possible without you.

Posted by: Rajiv Bammi, Software Engineer

ZIP and RAR support now available in the Google Docs Viewer

Google Docs — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 21:00:00 +0000

Downloading files that you only need to preview can create unnecessary clutter on your computer. While you can already use the Google Docs Viewer to view over 15 different file types without downloading them, today we’ve added support for archive file types ZIP and RAR. Now, if someone sends you a ZIP or RAR file in Gmail, you’ll be able to view its contents from within your browser by clicking on View.

This will bring up a view that includes all of the files in the archive, the file types, and the size of those files.

When you hover over the list you can activate a menu by clicking Actions. You’ll be able to View items supported by Google Docs Viewer and Print (PDF) those that we offer PDF support. Save to Google Docs and Download appear for all files.

ZIP and RAR archives that are embedded inside other archives also work. For example, if you have a RAR file inside a ZIP file (like in our example above) you can just click on that file to access the embedded archive.

Go ahead and try the feature by viewing a ZIP file.

This feature extends to Google Docs for mobile, too. For each viewable file (including embedded ZIP or RAR archives) there is a link to view.

We hope this removes the need to download full archives when you only need to work on select items. We’re always adding more file types to the Google Docs Viewer -- let us know what file types you’d like to see support for next in the forums.

Posted by: Avner Aviad, Google Docs Viewer team

The Google Docs Help Center gets a makeover

Google Docs — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 15:00:00 +0000

As Google Docs has developed over the last five years, the Google Docs Help Center has also grown to help you learn how to use hundreds of Google Docs features. With new features and articles being added regularly, however, the help center became hard to navigate, making it difficult to find useful help articles. Today, we’re happy to announce an entirely new help center structure that we’ve worked on for the last few months.

The Google Docs Help Center used to be divided by each individual Google Docs editor. But we've since found that presenting help articles by your intent is more helpful. We hope that this will cut down the time it takes you to find the article you're looking for, make it much easier to find that content, and help you learn about the power of Google Docs.

Here’s a look at the new categories you’ll find on the help center homepage:

Get started: Information about documents, spreadsheets, and more for new Google Docs users.

Work in Google Docs: Home to all help articles on editing and formatting, including content about Google documents and spreadsheets.

Manage, upload, and export: All help articles that were previously categorized as "Documents List." Here, you'll find information about file management, uploading and exporting, and Google Cloud Connect.

Share, publish, and embed: Information about sharing and publishing all in one place, since sharing is exactly the same no matter which type of doc you're working in.

Accounts, abuse, and privacy: Home to help articles about your Google Account, Google Docs settings, reporting abuse, and privacy policies.

Mobile: All help articles that relate to working in Google Docs on a mobile device.

Template gallery: Information about how to navigate the template gallery, use and submit templates, and report inappropriate templates.

Fix a problem: Houses information about known issues and how to solve a problem.

In the coming weeks, look out for more design and layout changes that will make your help center experience even better. Combined with the new help center organization, we hope that these ongoing design changes will make your learning experience in the help center more enjoyable, efficient, and useful.

Posted by: Julia Harter, Content and User Education Specialist

Our response to your Product Ideas

Google Docs — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 16:00:00 +0000

Recently we opened our Product Ideas page to gather your feedback about what you’d like to see next in Google Docs. Over a two-week period, nearly 4,000 of you participated, submitting close to 2,000 ideas and casting over 50,000 votes.

Our request for feedback was designed to help us better prioritize the features you want most in Google Docs. We'll be sure to let you know as we roll out new features based on your valuable input. Here are just a few of the top ideas that we’re prioritizing:

Add better header and footer functionality
Make Google Docs available offline
Create vertical merge in spreadsheets

There were many other great ideas - from making Google Docs available as attachments in Gmail to allowing the use of Google Fonts across all Google Docs tools. While we can’t get started on these requests just yet, we’ll be sure to keep them in mind for future improvements.

Thanks to all who participated in our Product Ideas page! We enjoyed reading your product suggestions and look forward to sharing our progress as we move forward with the your ideas.

Posted by: Posted by: Teresa Wu, Community Manager

Hats off to the winners of the inaugural Google Science Fair

Google Docs — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 15:00:00 +0000

Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog

Yesterday, our top 15 Google Science Fair finalists descended on Google’s headquarters and wowed our luminary judges—as well as more than 1,000 local attendees plus Googlers who stopped by to check out the action. Our exhibit hall was buzzing with energy and excitement as everyone wondered which young scientists would go home with our top prizes.

The results are in—and this year was all about girl power. Our top three winners by age category are:

Lauren Hodge in the 13-14 age group. Lauren studied the effect of different marinades on the level of potentially harmful carcinogens in grilled chicken.
Naomi Shah in the 15-16 age group. Naomi endeavored to prove that making changes to indoor environments that improve indoor air quality can reduce people’s reliance on asthma medications.
Shree Bose in the 17-18 age group. Shree discovered a way to improve ovarian cancer treatment for patients when they have built up a resistance to certain chemotherapy drugs.

Winners (from left to right): Lauren Hodge, Shree Bose, Naomi Shah

We also awarded one Grand Prize and the Grand Prize Winner is...Shree Bose; congratulations!

Our judges said the unifying elements of all three young women were their intellectual curiosity, their tenaciousness and their ambition to use science to find solutions to big problems. They examined complex problems and found both simple solutions that can be implemented by the general public—like changing your cooking habits or removing toxins from your home—as well as more complex solutions that can be addressed in labs by doctors and researchers, such as Shree’s groundbreaking discovery, which could have wider implications for cancer research.

The winners took home prizes furnished by Google and our partners CERN, LEGO and National Geographic. Shree received a $50,000 scholarship, a trip to the Galápagos Islands with a National Geographic Explorer and aninternship at CERN. Naomi and Lauren each received $25,000 scholarships and internships at Google and LEGO. All three were awarded lifetime digital subscriptions to Scientific American. Beyond the grand prizes, everyone went home with some pretty cool loot, along with plenty of photos and memories that we hope will last a lifetime. If you’d like to watch last night’s events, including a speech from our chairman, Eric Schmidt, and presentations from judges Dean Kamen and Tierney Thys, you can find video on our YouTube channel.

On behalf of Google, our partners and science lovers everywhere, we’d like to thank all of our finalists and everyone who submitted a project to the inaugural Google Science Fair. We are humbled by your ingenuity, your dedication and your skill. We are heartened to know that our future is in the capable hands of our young scientists—young men and women who tackle big ideas to bring significant, actionable change to the world.

If you’d like information about next year’s Google Science Fair, let us know and we’ll be in touch soon, or keep an eye on the Google Science Fair site for regular updates.

Posted by: Cristin Frodella, Google Education Team

Tonight, watch the Google Science Fair final event live

Google Docs — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 15:00:00 +0000

Cross posted on the Official Google Blog and the Google Students Blog

The young scientists of the world have proven themselves truly impressive people—inventing technologies to improve the accuracy of prosthetic devices, developing video-audio memory aids for dementia patients and improving switch designs to prevent train derailments. These are just three of the top 15 projects competing for the grand prize in the inaugural Google Science Fair final tonight, which we’ll be live streaming at 7pm PDT at youtube.com/googlesciencefair.

Back in January, we launched the first Google Science Fair in partnership with CERN, LEGO, National Geographic and Scientific American. We asked young people from ages 13-18 all over the world to submit projects online that were creative, inspiring and groundbreaking. Ten thousand students from 91 countries submitted 7,500 projects, from which our international team of judges selected the top 15 finalists.

Today, those finalists are at Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. where they’ll present their projects to a panel of science luminaries, inventors and Nobel laureates. The winners will receive amazing prizes including $100,000 in scholarships, internships at Google or our partners and a National Geographic Expedition to the Galápagos Islands.

So pull up a chair in your home laboratory and tune in to a live stream of the first Google Science Fair to find out which budding young Einstein will take home the grand prize. The event begins tonight, Monday July 11, at 7pm PDT—watch at youtube.com/googlesciencefair.

Posted by: Cristin Frodella, Google Education Team

This week in Docs: New features for your Google Docs videos

Google Docs — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 18:00:00 +0000

Beginning this week, you’ll be able to go beyond simply playing your videos within Google Docs -- you can now insert your videos into Google Sites, embed them anywhere on the web, and caption them for your viewers.

Embed videos in Google Sites
While on your Google site, go to the Insert menu and select Video > Google Docs Video.

From there, choose from the videos that are in your documents list and click Select to insert the video into your Google site.

Embed videos on the web
You can embed your videos anywhere else on the web by using the HTML snippet that is now available on the video’s page. Keep in mind that whether you’re embedding your video into your Google site or somewhere else on the web, only people to whom you’ve given access will be able to view the video. For example, if the video is set to private and shared with four people, only those four people will be able to view it on your Google site.

Add captions to your videos
You can also caption your videos to make them accessible for deaf and hard of hearing viewers or for speakers of different languages. You can find these videos more easily by searching for any text in the transcript of the video from your documents list. (Only people to whom you’ve given access to the video can find the video using this method.)

To give it a try, choose Manage caption tracks from the Actions menu for your video, then click Upload caption track... Anyone who has edit access can upload a track.

Let us know what you think of these new features by leaving us a comment -- or better yet, a video.

Posted by: Patrick Lacz, Software Engineer

Share your docs on the go with the improved Google Docs for mobile

Google Docs — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 16:00:00 +0000

Google Docs is about collaboration, but as many of us know, others often rely on us even when we’re nowhere near a computer. That’s why we’re excited to bring the features you need to your tablet and mobile device’s browser. Today, we've updated the look of Google Docs for mobile browsers and added the ability to sort, narrow, and share multiple docs in your mobile docs list.

To get started, go to docs.google.com from your supported device’s browser. Press Sort to organize the list of docs visible in the mobile browser, or press Narrow by to specify the subset of docs you’d like to see.

To share from your mobile docs list, select one or more documents, press the Share button, and select Share, Get the link to share for public or unlisted docs, or Email as attachment. Sharing a doc in your mobile browser works the same way as it does on the desktop.

We’re committed to improving the experience of accessing your docs from your mobile device. We’d love to hear what you think is working and what isn’t in our support forums as well as in the comments of this post.

Posted by: Hossein Attar, Software Engineer

"Mobile"-ize your business with Google Sites

Google Docs — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 13:00:00 +0000

Building on last week’s post on automatic mobile rendering, we’re excited to introduce five new templates to make it easier for businesses to create mobile landing pages. You can also start from scratch with our custom template if you’re feeling creative.

Watch the video below to see how “small” businessman, Bob, transformed his business using Google Sites:

Visit sites.google.com/mobilize to check out the five templates.

Posted by: Shiv Kumar, Google Mobile Specialist

Automatic mobile rendering for Google Sites

Google Docs — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 16:00:00 +0000

(Cross-posted to the Enterprise blog)

As the dramatic growth of the mobile web changes the way people consume content, it’s becoming increasingly important for publishers to provide a good mobile experience. With this in mind, we just added automatic mobile rendering in Google Sites for iOS 3.0+ and Android 2.2+ devices, and a mobile version of the Google Sites lists.

By going to General settings under More actions > Manage site and clicking on Automatically adjust site for mobile phones, your Google site will be automatically adjusted whenever it’s viewed from an iOS or Android 2.2+ device:


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The most noticeable automatic adjustments include:

Aligning the header layout and top bar
Fitting the width of the site to match the device’s width
Smart handling of sidebars, horizontal navigation, and dropdown links

After you’ve enabled this feature, you can preview the page from your computer as a mobile viewer using More actions > Preview as viewer then select Mobile from the yellow Preview page as viewer (Mobile | Desktop) box at the top of the page.

You can also choose to hide some of the links in your site’s footer to save vertical space.

It’s also important for you to be able to access and search your own sites on the go, which is why we’ve also added mobile versions of the site list, sites search, and browse sites categories.

Just navigate to http://sites.google.com from any iOS 3.0+ or Android 2.2+ device for quick access to your sites.

As more people unplug from their desks and interact with content on the go, new doors are opening for everyone. We hope these tools will empower you to meet the challenges of publishing in a mobile world using Google Sites.

Posted by: Luciano Cheng, Software Engineer

Open files more easily in Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office

Google Docs — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 17:30:00 +0000

(Cross-posted to the Enterprise blog)

One of the key features of Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office is the ability to easily sync Office documents up to Google Docs and to collaborate on them with others. You asked us to simplify the experience of downloading and opening Office documents stored in your Google Docs account, so today we’re doing just that. Now you can open any Office file stored in Google Docs directly from within Microsoft Office.

From the Google Cloud Connect menu, click Open from Google Docs…

This will bring up a dialog listing all the documents that can be opened with the application you are using. For example, if you are working in Microsoft PowerPoint, you will see a list of all the Microsoft PowerPoint files available in Google Docs. You can then select the file you want to download and open.

If you have lots of files stored in Google Docs, use search to find the file you are looking for. After selecting a file to open, the file will be downloaded to your computer and opened automatically.

When you want to open the file again, you’ll be able to open it from the folder you downloaded the file into. Now you can collaborate, share and access revision history on that file in Microsoft Office.

As always, we would love to hear your feedback and thoughts.

Posted by: Himanshu Vasishth, Software Engineer

Our team shares what’s next in Docs in a Reddit “Ask Me Anything”

Google Docs — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 19:00:00 +0000

Earlier this week, five members of our team held an “Ask Me Anything” Q&A on Reddit, a popular social news community. While we get to hear from you on the forums, Twitter, and our blog regularly, we thought it’d be fun to experiment with something different.

In the IAmA subcategory on Reddit, a poster starts a thread by saying “I am a...” before allowing Redditors to freely ask questions. After introducing ourselves -- product managers Scott Johnston, Jeff Harris, and Ronald Ho; engineer DJ Lee; and me, the community manager -- we gave users the green light to ask us anything.

Over the next six hours, Redditors posed questions about our product roadmap, the challenges we’d encountered during development, and even our breakfast food preferences. We also gave users a sneak peek into the things we’re currently working on, including Cloudprint, presentations, and the mobile experience.

Having an AMA was a unique opportunity for us to hear from the community, and we were delighted by the stories, witty comments, and declarations of love that Redditors shared with us.

We announced this Reddit AMA on Monday via our @GoogleDocs Twitter account -- if you’re interested in participating in a community event like this in the future, be sure to follow us on Twitter.

Posted by: Teresa Wu, Community Manager

Tips & Tricks: Using the description field in your documents list

Google Docs — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 14:55:00 +0000

You may not have noticed the description field for items in your documents list, but descriptions hold great potential for sharing information and file management.

When you have an item selected, you’ll see information about the item in the details pane to the right of your documents list, including a Description section. If you don’t see the details pane, click the double-arrow in the upper right of your documents list to expand it.

What you add to the description, in addition to the contents of the doc itself, can be found when you use the search box in Google Docs. This opens up the possibility of using the description for keywords and tagging. So, if your description contains the words “Astronaut, Space” that file will show in your search results when you do a Google Docs search for “astronaut” or “space.”

Descriptions also allow you to add clickable links. If it’s important for you to reference a website on an item, simply copy and paste the URL into your description. When the details pane is open, you’ll be able to click the link.

You can also make your description stand out with formatting:

Use underscores to italicize a word, such as _word_
Use asterisks to bold a word, such as *word*
Use hyphens to strike-through a word, such as -word-

A description is a great way to share information about your shared doc or collection to all of your collaborators, or add reference notes about an item. With the added benefit of search, clickable links, and formatting, descriptions become a powerful tool for sharing information and managing your growing documents list.

If you have other suggestions for ways you’ve used the description field, please add them in the comments below.

Posted by: Rebecca Steelman, Consumer Experience Specialist

This week in Docs and Sites: Ignore All, Ubuntu, and Site soft delete

Google Docs — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 19:00:00 +0000

We’re releasing a small batch of features this week: In Google documents, we added an Ignore all option to hide all spelling suggestions for a specific word, and a new web font, Ubuntu. We’ve also made it easier to manage your deleted sites in Google Sites.

Ignore All
In documents, we already give you the option to add words to your dictionary so we won’t show spelling suggestions for them in the future. That feature is convenient if you’re using a surname that will be reused in many documents. But sometimes there’s a non-dictionary word that’s only used in one doc, which might make you hesitant to add that word to your dictionary for all docs. Ignore All lets you hide the spelling suggestions for a specific word, but only affects the doc that you currently have opened.

Ubuntu
We’re also adding a new font to Google documents: Ubuntu. Earlier this year, we made Ubuntu available in the Google Font API, and it quickly rose to become one of our most popular fonts. The font was commissioned by Canonical Ltd and designed by Dalton Maag as part of the Ubuntu operating system open source project.

Ubuntu has a simple, modern style that’s both recognizable and legible. It’s designed to look great in many sizes, and we hope you’ll find it useful in anything from document text to large poster headlines to small image captions.

You can learn more about Ubuntu and see how to use the font by visiting the Google Font Directory.

Soft delete your sites
We’ve received a lot of feedback that it was sometimes difficult to restore a deleted site, since you needed to remember a deleted site’s URL. Starting today, you will be able to view any sites you’ve deleted in the Deleted sites section of My Sites rather than needing to remember their URLs. In this section, you can also choose to restore your site or delete it permanently before 30 days have passed. Note that as before, after the 30-day grace period, deleted sites will be permanently deleted.

Let us know what you think of these updates. If you have any ideas for new features, submit them to our Product Ideas page, open until June 16.

Posted by: Kara Levy, Software Engineer

Share your Google Docs product ideas with our team

Google Docs — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 16:00:00 +0000

(Cross-posted to the Enterprise blog)

You make Google products what they are -- and the feedback you share with us every day helps shape the future of our products. We’re always listening to your requests via blogs, Twitter, our forum, and other channels, and for the next two weeks, we’re bringing back a more structured way to get your input by opening up our Product Ideas page.

On this page, you can submit your ideas, read other users’ suggestions, and vote up your favorites. We’ll use the top ideas to help us prioritize our development in the coming months. After the two-week period, we'll follow up with a blog post summarizing the results. While we may not work on all of the top ideas immediately, we’ll let you know which of the ideas we’re working on.

We hope you’ll use this as an opportunity to help us prioritize the features that are important to you -- for your business, in the classroom, or at home. Start submitting your ideas, big or small -- we look forward to hearing what you have to say!

Note: We’re specifically looking to hear your product ideas and suggestions. If you’re seeking help, please post your support questions to the Help Forum. Off topic submissions may be removed.

Posted by: Teresa Wu, Community Manager

Our plans to support modern browsers across Google Apps

Google Docs — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 18:00:00 +0000

(Cross-posted to the Google Enterprise Blog and the Gmail Blog)

For web applications to spring even farther ahead of traditional software, our teams need to make use of new capabilities available in modern browsers. For example, desktop notifications for Gmail and drag-and-drop file upload in Google Docs require advanced browsers that support HTML5. Older browsers just don’t have the chops to provide you with the same high-quality experience.

For this reason, soon Google Apps will only support modern browsers. Beginning August 1st, we’ll support the current and prior major release of Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari on a rolling basis. Each time a new version is released, we’ll begin supporting the update and stop supporting the third-oldest version.

As of August 1st, we will discontinue support for the following browsers and their predecessors: Firefox 3.5, Internet Explorer 7, and Safari 3. In these older browsers you may have trouble using certain features in Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Docs and Google Sites, and eventually these apps may stop working entirely.

So if it’s been a a while since your last update, we encourage you to get the latest version of your favorite browser. There are many to choose from:

As the world moves more to the web, these new browsers are more than just a modern convenience, they are a necessity for what the future holds.

Posted by Venkat Panchapakesan, Vice President of Engineering

Summarize your data with pivot tables

Google Docs — Tue, 17 May 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Starting today, we're rolling out pivot tables in Google spreadsheets. Pivot tables make it easy to process and summarize large data sets in seconds. Check out the video below for a look at how pivot tables work in Google spreadsheets:

In essence, a pivot table does just that -- it allows you to “pivot” or rotate data, thus looking at it from different angles and seeing a variety of patterns which may not be immediately obvious. Let’s take a very simple example of a list of students. This list includes a number of students and some information about them, including gender, class level, and major.

To create a pivot table, select your data and go to Data > Pivot Table Report. In the pivot table report editor, you can add fields to set your rows, columns, and values and can drag and drop the fields around within the editor. Here, we’ve used pivot tables to display the number of students in each class level by gender.

Fields in the Values section can be summarized using built-in formulas to sum, count, or otherwise calculate your data. In the example above the number of students in each class level was summarized via a simple count.

The filter section lets you specify exactly what data you want to be included in the pivot table. For example, we can choose to only count the students in certain extracurricular activities.

With each change, the pivot table is updated in real-time for both you and any collaborators. If you prefer to make changes in batches, you can switch to manual mode. In this mode, your changes won’t be saved until you select Update table.

You can try pivot tables out for yourself using this template or by using your own data set. Please note that pivot tables from Microsoft Excel can’t be uploaded to Google spreadsheets at this time.

We hope you’ll enjoy exploring pivot tables in Google spreadsheets and that they’ll save you time analyzing your data. Check out our help content for even more examples.

Posted by: Matt Ziegelbaum, Software Engineer

Upload images in Google Spreadsheets

Google Docs — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 16:00:00 +0000

(Cross-posted to the Google Enterprise Blog)

We’re excited to announce that you can now upload images to Google spreadsheets. From the Insert menu, select Image... Then, choose an image file to upload into your spreadsheet.

With this feature, you can upload an image already stored on your computer, search for an image online, or add personal photos directly from one of your Picasa Web Albums.

Let us know what you think in the Google spreadsheets forum!

Posted by: Nick Santos, Staff Software Engineer

Google Sites brings you over 100 new web fonts

Google Docs — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 18:00:00 +0000

(Cross-posted to the Google Enterprise Blog)

Ever wanted to make your Google site feel even more unique? Today, we added a wide variety of Google Web Fonts to Google Sites, making it easier to style your website and make it look awesome.

Now you can go to Manage Site under More Actions and choose Color and Fonts in the left-hand navigation to choose fonts for the entire site in one go. The web fonts feature lets you select different sections of the site such as the entire page or just the title to selectively choose your styling. Additionally, we've given you control over font sizes for many of these sections.

Take a look at a site that uses multiple web fonts:

We’re looking forward to seeing the sites you create with these beautiful new fonts.

Posted by: Robert Dionne, Software Engineer

Introducing the new Google Docs app for Android

Google Docs — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 15:00:00 +0000

Increasingly, people are using mobile phones to access information -- from email to web browsing to editing documents. Part of getting work done on the go is being able to easily access, edit and share content, which is why we’re happy to announce the new Google Docs app for Android.

With this new app it’s easy to filter and search for your content across any Google account, then jump straight into editing docs using the online mobile editors. The app also allows you to easily share items with contacts on your phone, right from within the app.

The Docs app also allows you to upload content from your phone and open documents directly from Gmail. You can also add a widget to your home screen for easy access to three core tasks: jumping to your starred documents, taking a photo to upload, or creating a new document with one tap.

And my favorite feature: Using the app and your phone’s camera, you can turn photos with text into editable Google documents with the power of optical character recognition (OCR). Just create a new ‘Document from Photo' or select the camera icon from the widget, and your converted document will appear in your documents list shortly after you snap the picture. You can also convert photos already stored on your phone by sharing them with the Google Docs app. OCR does a pretty good job capturing unformatted text in English but won't recognize handwriting or some fonts - stay tuned, it will get better over time!

The Google Docs app is currently available in English and works on Android 2.1+ phones. Try it out by scanning the QR code below or by visiting Android Market.

Let us know what you think of the new Google Docs Android app in our forum.

Posted by: Reuben Kan, Software Engineer

Simpler file upload in Google Docs

Google Docs — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 15:00:00 +0000

Last November, we added the ability to drag and drop files from your desktop to the upload page, improving the ability to upload any file. Over the next few weeks, we’re releasing three additional features to make it easy to upload files to Docs: folder upload, documents list integration, and drag-and-drop upload.

To start, we’ve added folder upload via the new Upload menu in the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox and Safari.

You’ll need to install a small applet to use folder upload in Firefox and Safari. The existing folder structure is preserved on upload which means that folders within folders will also upload and become collections within collections.

Second, we’ve merged the upload page’s functionality into the documents list to create a much better upload experience. When you upload files via the new drop-down menu, a window will pop up in the bottom right of your documents list and show upload progress.

Once files are uploaded, they will appear in your documents list within seconds. You can also share them from the pop-up. Uploaded files go into the currently selected collection and have visibility set to private unless the collection is shared.

Upload settings have also moved. The first time you use the new upload method, you’ll see a pop-up asking you whether you want to convert files to the Google Docs format and if you want to convert images via Optical Character Recognition (OCR). You can always return to these settings via the drop down in the upload menu or the pop-up.

Lastly, if you are using Chrome, Safari and Firefox on your Mac or PC, you’ll also be able to drag-and-drop one or more files directly into your documents list to initiate an upload. You can even drop files directly into a collection on the left. Note due to browser limitations it isn’t possible to drag-and-drop folders directly into the documents list.

If you hit your storage limit, the upload will return an error and you’ll need to delete files or purchase additional storage for Google Docs for $0.02 per GB per month ($0.25 per GB per year). Please note that the new upload capabilities don’t support the ability to select a language when converting a document via OCR (Optical Character Recognition) or select visibility settings before upload. If you’d like to use these features, you can still use the older version of the upload page by choosing Basic... from the Upload menu.

We’ll be rolling this out to everyone with personal Google Accounts over the next month in all Google Docs languages. Rapid Release Google Apps users can expect to see the feature rolled out shortly thereafter. You’ll know when the features are available to you when you see a popup message at the top of your documents list.

If you have any additional questions about the upcoming changes to uploading files, check out our FAQ.

Posted by: Mike Procopio, Software Engineer

Update: This is now rolled out to everyone.