Google Data

Editing with others in real-time makes it easy to get stuff done in Google spreadsheets in only a matter of minutes. But with so many people working in the same space, it’s possible to modify a section that a collaborator didn’t intend to be touched. That’s why, today, we’re updating the Named Ranges feature in spreadsheets to let you also protect them.

To get started with Protected Ranges in a shared spreadsheet, highlight the cells you’d like to protect, right-click, and choose Name and protect range from the menu.

Click through the presentation below to see the feature in action.

Even more spreadsheet features added this month 

Along with the arrival of protected ranges, you can now add colors and patterns when you apply cell borders in Google spreadsheets. We also updated find and replace to make it possible to search using patterns (also called regular expressions). For example, “^[A-Z]+” will find all the cells that start with uppercase letters.

As always, Google spreadsheets is getting better every day, so stay tuned for even more features and updates in the coming weeks.

Posted by: Joe Kaptur, Software Engineer

Good design is an important part of getting your point across in a presentation. Over time we’ve added a bunch of features to help you bring a little something extra to your decks, like slide transitions and animations, thousands of free stock photos, and a growing collection of templates.

Today, creating eye-catching presentations gets even easier, with more than 450 new fonts to choose from. (flip through the presentation below to see them in action)

To browse and select new fonts, click on Add fonts from the bottom of the fonts dropdown in the toolbar. This will take you to the menu of all available fonts, where you can pick the ones you want to use.

Any fonts that you select will get automatically added to your fonts list so it’s easy to find them later.

Plus, fonts that you’ve already added to Google documents will automatically appear in your presentations font list too.

So next time you’re working on a presentation, jazz it up with some Calligrafitti, Indie Flower, Short Stack, or hundreds of other new choices.

Posted by Erin Rosenbaum, Software Engineer

Summer brings fun in the sun (in our hemisphere, at least) and a bunch of updates to Google Drive. A few weeks ago at Google I/O, we announced a couple of highly requested features: the ability to edit Google documents offline and a Drive app for iOS.

When you enable Docs offline in Google Drive, you can create & edit Google documents and view Google spreadsheets, without being connected to the internet. Today we updated the offline experience so it looks the same as when you’re online – except it’s filtered to show just your offline docs. Here’s an extra tip: if you want to preview which files are available offline, select More > Offline Docs in the left navigation pane while you’re still connected to the web. This update will roll out to all Drive users over the next few days.

In the past month we’ve also made several other improvements like:

• updates to Google Apps Script including a standalone script editor, the ability to create richer user interfaces, options to easily store your application’s data, and support for publishing scripts to the Chrome Web Store 
• expanded language support in the documents and presentations spellchecker to include German, French and Italian 
• the ability to print documents, spreadsheets, and presentations to any cloud connected printer with Google Cloud Print from any browser 
• up to 400pt font support in documents and presentations 
• copying and pasting images from your desktop into a document or presentation 
• an easy way to edit or open links from text by right clicking on them 

Posted by Owen Merkling, Software Engineer

Posted by Lisa Davis, CIO, Georgetown University Editors note: Today’s guest blogger is Lisa Davis, Chief Information Officer at Georgetown University. Going Google was an opportunity to reimagine technology’s role at Georgetown and unify o…

Posted by Clay Bavor, Product Management Director(Cross-posted on the Google Docs Blog.) 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 t…

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

When a country is unable to hold regular elections, how do people make their voices heard? That’s the challenge today in Somalia, which hasn’t had a permanent government since 1991. Somalia is in the middle of drafting a new provisional constitutio…

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

April showers bring May flowers, along with a bunch of new features and updates to Google Docs. In May we launched the research pane which makes it easy to look things up and insert quotes, images, and maps into documents without ever having to open a…

Editors note: Today’s guest blogger is Juan Merelo, technical services manager at Pratt Industries, America’s 6th largest recycled paper and packaging company headquartered in Conyers, Georgia. See what other organizations that have gone Google hav…

You can now search the web for information directly from Google Docs using the new research pane. From the research pane, you can look up maps, quotes, images and add them directly to your document.Release track:RapidEditions included:Google Apps, Goog…

Posted by Sarveshwar Duddu, Software Engineer Cross-posted on the Google Docs blog.Today we’re introducing the research pane—a new feature that brings the web’s wealth of information to you as you’re writing documents.The research pane taps int…

Today we’re introducing the research pane—a new feature that brings the web’s wealth of information to you as you’re writing documents.

The research pane taps into Google Search directly from Google documents, so whether you want to add a cool destination to your itinerary for an upcoming trip to India or you’re looking for the perfect presidential quote for a political science paper, you don’t even have to open a new tab.

You can access the research pane from the Tools menu by right clicking on a selected word that you want to learn more about, or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+R on Windows or Cmd+Alt+R on Mac. From the research pane, you can search for whatever info you need to help you write your document. With just a couple clicks you can look up maps, quotes, images, and much more.

If you find something you like, you can add it by clicking the insert button or, for images, by dragging them directly into your document. If appropriate we’ll automatically add a footnote citation so there’s a record of where you found the info.

Hopefully bringing knowledge from the web to Google documents will make your writing process just a little bit more efficient.

Posted by Sarveshwar Duddu, Software Engineer

The following features are now available to domains following the Scheduled Release track:- No new features to announceThe following features are intended for release to these domains on or around May 15th:- Sites: Keyboard shortcuts in Sites editor.- …

Starting Wednesday, May 16th, we will begin the process of migrating legacy Google documents (those created before July 2010) to the new document editor. The new editor has the following features:- Real time collaboration: See updates from other collab…