Docs Blog

Find facts and do research inside Google Documents

2012-05-15T16:17:00.000-07:00

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

April in Review: New fonts galore and other fresh features

2012-05-02T11:00:00.001-07:00

In the past month we’ve made updates both big and small to Google Docs, and today we’re announcing one more: web fonts in Google documents. Often the best way to get your point across is to present your idea in a creative, captivating way. Today, we added over 450 new fonts to Google documents to make it easier for you to add a little something extra to whatever you create.

To use these new fonts, click on the font menu and select “Add fonts” at the very bottom, which will take you to a menu of all the Google Web Fonts available.

Once you’ve selected new fonts, you’ll be able to select them from the font menu.

Whether you’re looking for the perfect font for your first comic book or fancy handwriting for your wedding invitations, we hope you try out the new fonts and create some eye-catching documents.

In addition to hundreds of new fonts, we have a lot of other exciting updates to report:

Google Drive launched as a place where you can create, share, collaborate, and keep all your stuff.
There are now a few more options for inserting images in Docs, including inserting from Google Drive, searching for images from the LIFE Photo archive, or taking a snapshot with your webcam.
Charts in spreadsheets now has support for minor gridlines and options to customize the formats of axis labels
Accessibility in Docs got better with support for screenreaders in presentations and with the addition of NVDA to our list of supported screenreaders.
From File > Page setup... you can now set the default page size for your new documents.
It's now easier for speakers of right-to-left languages by automatically showing bidirectional controls when you type in a language that might use them.
Apps Script had many improvements, including

A new ScriptService for programmatically publishing your scripts and controlling when they run.
A new function to find the root folder of someone’s Drive.
An increase in the allowed attachment size in emails from 5MB to 25MB.
An increase in the size of docs files you can create from 2MB to 50MB.

There are now over 60 new templates in our template gallery.

Posted by Isabella Ip, Software Engineer

Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

2012-04-24T09:36:00.000-07:00

(Cross posted from the Official Google Blog)

Just like the Loch Ness Monster, you may have heard the rumors about Google Drive. It turns out, one of the two actually does exist. Today, we’re introducing Google Drive—a place where you can create, share, collaborate, and keep all of your stuff. Whether you’re working with a friend on a joint research project, planning a wedding with your fiancé or tracking a budget with roommates, you can do it in Drive. You can upload and access all of your files, including videos, photos, Google Docs, PDFs and beyond.

With Google Drive, you can:

Create and collaborate. Google Docs is built right into Google Drive, so you can work with others in real time on documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Once you choose to share content with others, you can add and reply to comments on anything (PDF, image, video file, etc.) and receive notifications when other people comment on shared items.
Store everything safely and access it anywhere (especially while on the go). All your stuff is just... there. You can access your stuff from anywhere—on the web, in your home, at the office, while running errands and from all of your devices. You can install Drive on your Mac or PC and can download the Drive app to your Android phone or tablet. We’re also working hard on a Drive app for your iOS devices. And regardless of platform, blind users can access Drive with a screen reader.
Search everything. Search by keyword and filter by file type, owner and more. Drive can even recognize text in scanned documents using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. Let’s say you upload a scanned image of an old newspaper clipping. You can search for a word from the text of the actual article. We also use image recognition so that if you drag and drop photos from your Grand Canyon trip into Drive, you can later search for [grand canyon] and photos of its gorges should pop up. This technology is still in its early stages, and we expect it to get better over time.

You can get started with 5GB of storage for free—that’s enough to store the high-res photos of your trip to the Mt. Everest, scanned copies of your grandparents’ love letters or a career’s worth of business proposals, and still have space for the novel you’re working on. You can choose to upgrade to 25GB for $2.49/month, 100GB for $4.99/month or even 1TB for $49.99/month. When you upgrade to a paid account, your Gmail account storage will also expand to 25GB. Drive is built to work seamlessly with your overall Google experience. You can attach photos from Drive to posts in Google+, and soon you’ll be able to attach stuff from Drive directly to emails in Gmail. Drive is also an open platform, so we’re working with many third-party developers so you can do things like send faxes, edit videos and create website mockups directly from Drive. To install these apps, visit the Chrome Web Store—and look out for even more useful apps in the future. This is just the beginning for Google Drive; there’s a lot more to come. Get started with Drive today at drive.google.com/start—and keep looking for Nessie... Posted by Sundar Pichai, SVP, Chrome & Apps

March in Review: Improved charting, expanded language support, and Apps Script updates

2012-04-04T08:46:00.000-07:00

Another month and another batch of improvements to Google Docs. We recently debuted a new spell checker that gets smarter and grows with the web, and we’ve also turned on a few features that let you do more with Docs.

New charting options
We’ve added a bunch of new ways to make richer charts in Google spreadsheets. You can now control the opacity of an area chart, set fonts to be bold or italic, and label sections of your charts along the axis.

These new features bring the number of charting improvements up to 30 since the beginning of the year, which is about 1 new feature every 3 days. Some of our favorite charts updates include annotations, error bars, a second Y axis, donut charts, and loads of formatting options.

OCR and spreadsheets support more languages
With Google Docs, you can upload PDFs and images of scanned text and have them automatically converted into Google documents using our Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. Starting this week, this is available in four new languages: Hebrew, Hindi, Chinese Traditional, and Cherokee.

Language support got better in Google spreadsheets too. For Hebrew and Arabic speakers, sheets and cells now offer right-to-left support.

More ways to use Google Apps Script
Google Apps Script is a way for developers to customize Google Docs and other Google products. Over the past month, we’ve made some changes which developers may find helpful, including:

Support for adding your own HTML to your script’s dialogues and pages. Let’s say you wrote a script that prompts collaborators to play a game when they open a certain spreadsheet. It’s now possible to include more sophisticated HTML, like a table in the dialog that you built.

The option to programmatically set sheet protection in Apps Script. If you’re a teacher, you could add a script that automatically looked at all your spreadsheets and made sure that you’re the only one allowed to edit any sheet named “Grades”.
A redesign to the Apps Script menus. Sometimes when you’re starting a new project you’ll want to use scripts that you’ve already created. The menu changes make it easier for you to reuse scripts that you’ve already built and to share your scripts with other people .

Posted by Michael Schidlowsky, Software Engineer

Spell checking powered by the web

2012-03-21T08:42:00.001-07:00

One of my early projects at Google was to improve the suggestions that are made when a query is misspelled in Google Search. The neat thing about that system is that it’s adaptive: our suggestions get smarter and smarter based on the words Googlebot sees as it explores the web.

But search isn’t the only place where I make spelling mistakes! And that got me wondering: could we take this adaptive technology and use it to make spell checking better in other places?

The answer is yes. To prove it, today we’re launching an update to spell checking in documents and presentations that grows and adapts with the web, instead of relying on a fixed dictionary. This update has a few big advantages over traditional spell checkers:

Suggestions are contextual. For example, the spell checker is now smart enough to know what you mean if you type “Icland is an icland.”

Contextual suggestions are made even if the misspelled word is in the dictionary. If you write “Let’s meat tomorrow morning for coffee” you’ll see a suggestion to change “meat” to “meet."
Suggestions are constantly evolving. As Google crawls the web, we see new words, and if those new words become popular enough they’ll automatically be included in our spell checker—even pop culture terms, like Skrillex.

This new spell checker is available for English documents and presentations, but we plan to bring it to more languages soon. We’re really excited to give you a spelling system that continuously gets better. We hope it will make writing more efficient and enjoyable for you.

Posted by Yew Jin Lim, Software Engineer

Improved discussions, search scanned text in PDFs, and more

2012-03-06T10:02:00.001-08:00

Fresh on the heels of adding discussions to Google presentations and the ability to edit within the Google Docs Android app, we’ve been hard at work on a few other new features to enhance your Google Docs experience.

All your comments--in one tidy place
We just added the discussions feature to Google drawings, and today we’re making it even easier to see a log of all of the comments that have been made whether you’re using drawings, documents, or presentations. Just click on the “Comments” button in the upper right corner of the editor to see a complete history of your discussions. You can reply in line, resolve or re-open comments, link directly to a comment, or change notification settings--without ever leaving the “Comments” menu.

Better text search for PDFs and images
Last month, we launched a feature to let you search for text inside the PDFs in your documents list. Now, using the same optical character recognition technology, you can search for and copy highlighted text when you open a scanned PDF, like a fax or hotel receipt.

It’s not just stuff in your documents list: we’ve also made text in PDFs and images uploaded to Google Sites searchable.

And that’s not all...
In addition to the features that were released today, over the last few weeks we’ve also made a bunch of other changes that you may have noticed. Now you can:

Add custom Javascript and CSS to your Google Sites
See full names in document and presentation comments (instead of showing email addresses)
Use keyboard shortcuts for navigating between table cells in documents
Cancel running scripts from the Google Apps Script editor
Add donut charts and error bars in spreadsheets

Posted by Ian Kilpatrick, Software Engineer

Collaborate and edit anywhere with the updated Google Docs for Android

2012-02-22T12:02:00.000-08:00

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

2012-02-22T10:59:00.000-08:00

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

2012-02-15T09:08:00.000-08:00

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

2012-02-07T10:02:00.000-08:00

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

2012-02-01T10:45:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-20T09:00:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-15T11:30:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-13T09:30:00.000-08:00

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.

2011-12-09T09:00:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-11T06:00:00.000-08:00

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

2011-10-28T09:00:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-21T12:30:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-20T08:12:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-18T08:00:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-11T11:00:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-05T09:45:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-03T09:59:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-28T06:04:00.000-07:00

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

Trying on the new Dynamic Views from Blogger

2011-09-27T15:08:00.000-07:00

As you may have noticed, the Docs blog looks a lot different today. That’s because we—along with a few other Google blogs—are trying out a new set of Blogger templates called Dynamic Views.

Launched today, Dynamic Views is a unique browsing experience that makes it easier and faster for readers to explore blogs in interactive ways. We’re using the Classic view, but you can also preview this blog in any of the other six new views by using the view selection bar at the top left of the screen.

We’re eager to hear what you think about the new Dynamic Views. You can submit feedback using the “Send feedback” link on the bottom right of this page.

If you like what you see here, and we hope you do, we encourage you to try out the new look(s) on your own blog—read the Blogger Buzz post for more info.

Posted by Meredith Blackwell, Google Docs Marketing Manager