Lazy Wednesday…
September 5th, 2007 | Published in Google Docs
I'm a pretty lazy guy, as I'm sure anyone who knows me can attest to. Any method or process that reduces the amount of work I have to do in order to accomplish a task is always a welcome addition to my tool set. This is why it made me very excited to hear that I would be in charge of providing the ultimate laziness feature to Google Spreadsheets users: AutoFill. With AutoFill you can reduce the amount of repetitive entry into your sheets by dragging the new little square at the bottom right of whatever range is selected. You can now fill in commonly seen series, like the days of the week or a series of numbers, or simply use it as a copy-and-paste tool. But of course, that's not all...
For some real interesting fills, we've hooked AutoFill up to our old-timer Labs brother, Google Sets (a combination that JR refers to as 'MagicFill'). Make use of the integration by holding down the CTRL (Linux and Windows) or ALT (Mac) keys before dragging the handle, and you can use it to create grocery lists, luggage manifests, or a list of similar prospective colleges (for all you rising high school seniors out there). We're still working out some kinks, though, so consider this an early-release feature ;). Thanks to Matt for helping make sure there were less kinks than my earlier version.
Of course, AutoFill isn't the only new addition...
We've also just introduced some cool new data query functions that allow you to import RSS/Atom, HTML, CSV/TSV and XML data directly into your sheet. These are handy for basic data import tasks and provide virtually endless opportunities for integrating information from web sources. The spreadsheet fanatics out there (we have some here) might even try this as an alternative to the fantastic Google Reader interface for aggregating your favorite feeds ;). Special thanks goes out to Tom Swedlund, a summer intern, who was in charge of implementing those.
You may also notice the new strike-through font formatting button that was implemented courtesy of Animesh Kejriwal in his 20% time. Thanks Animesh!
Have fun, and don't forget to post some of your own discovered 'MagicFills' in our Help Group...