Tips and Tricks: Images in cells

As we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, you can now insert images into a cell. With the image() formula you can link to a publicly accessible image and control how it will look with optional parameters. This is useful for bringing a visual element to your spreadsheets for things such as a product catalog listing.

For example the formula
=image("http://www.google.com/intl/en_ALL/images/srpr/logo1w.png", 1) will scale the image down in the current cell. With other parameters you can choose from a variety of sizing options including size to fit, stretch, original size, and even specify a custom size.

Try them all out using this template and let us know what you think in the comments.

Posted by: Li-Wei Lee, Senior Software Engineer

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Improving team collaboration and productivity with Google Sites

If you’re interested in learning more about Google Sites, this cross post from the Google Enterprise Blog might interest you.

Effective collaboration has become a key driver to improve team productivity. Project teams, often located across disparate locations and time zones, produce and distribute content in different formats and platforms. Teams need to consolidate relevant information in one place that’s easy to navigate and retrieve. Contributors and reviewers have specific needs to manage the creative process, maintain the project plan and keep all stakeholders informed.

With Google Sites, you can easily manage projects and create, share, find, and publish content across your organization. Easy to use features such as site and page templates and embedded documents make it easy for any user to create useful sites. Google Sites can be used for company intranets, portals, team project and more. Furthermore, the Google Sites API gives third-party developers a way to access, integrate with, and extend the platform. The To-Do gadget is an example of extending a Google Site with a tool that can enable teams to track and manage tasks.

Join Scott Johnston, Group Product Manager of Google Sites, and me for a live webinar on Tuesday, December 7th to learn more about improving collaboration and team productivity. I’ll start with an overview of Google Sites and highlight features that can help teams be more productive. We will be featuring a live demo.

Register to attend the live webinar on 12/7 @ 10am PST / 1pm EST / 6 pm GMT.

We hope to see you there.

Posted by Lisa Ding, Google Sites Team

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New this week in Docs: Drag and drop upload and compact controls

We just launched a pair of features that can save you time and give you more room to work: drag and drop upload and compact controls.

Drag and drop upload
A few weeks ago, we made it easier to add images to your documents using drag and drop. Today we’re extending that functionality to the file upload page, making it even easier to move your files into the cloud. Now if you’re using Chrome, Safari, or Firefox, you’ll be able to quickly drag files into the drop area and shoot them up to the cloud.

Compact controls
The document editor borrowed a feature from spreadsheets to save screen space. You can now hide the title bar above the editor by choosing View -> Compact controls or pressing Ctrl Shift F (Cmd Shift F on Macs).

Let us know what you think in the comments.

Posted by: Mike Procopio, Software Engineer

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A bridge to the cloud: Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office now available to early testers

Cross posted on the Google Enterprise Blog

Tens of millions of people have moved to Google Docs because it’s 100% web: it provides real-time collaboration in the browser, with no software to install, manage or upgrade. Of course, we know that many more of you still use Microsoft Office, because until recently, there weren’t many tools to help you collaborate and share with others. Now there’s more choice.

To help smooth the transition from Office to the cloud, my teammates and I founded a company called DocVerse, which was acquired by Google earlier this year. Over the last 9 months, we’ve been hard at work moving the DocVerse product to Google’s infrastructure. We’ve also renamed it Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office. Today, we’re pleased to take the next step towards a public launch and make it available to early testers.

For those of you who have not made the full move to Google Docs and are still using Microsoft Office, Google has something great to offer. With Cloud Connect, people can continue to use the familiar Office interface, while reaping many of the benefits of web-based collaboration that Google Docs users already enjoy.

Users of Office 2003, 2007 and 2010 can sync their Office documents to the Google cloud, without ever leaving Office. Once synced, documents are backed-up, given a unique URL, and can be accessed from anywhere (including mobile devices) at any time through Google Docs. And because the files are stored in the cloud, people always have access to the current version.

Once in the Google cloud, documents can be easily shared and even simultaneously edited by multiple people, from right within Office. A full revision history is kept as the files are edited, and users can revert to earlier versions in one click. These are all features that Google Docs users already enjoy today, and now we’re bringing them to Microsoft Office.

All you need is a Google account, and you’re ready to go. That’s it!

If you’re a Google Apps for Business customer interested in joining our preview program, please sign up here. If you’re not, don’t worry- at launch, Google Cloud Connect will be available free to everyone, including consumers.

Posted by Shan Sinha, Group Product Manager

Update: Thank you for your interest! Due to the extraordinary demand from thousands of businesses in just the last few hours, we are no longer accepting volunteers for our early testing program. Please fill out this form if you would like to be notified when Google Cloud Connect becomes available.

Many of you have also asked about availability for Macs. Unfortunately due to the lack of support for open APIs on Microsoft Office for Mac, we are unable to make Google Cloud Connect available on Macs at this time. We look forward to when that time comes so we can provide this feature to our Mac customers as well.

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Tips & Tricks: Creating new Google Docs from your mobile

Yesterday, we announced mobile editing on Google Docs, which we've now rolled out to all English-language users.

One of the new features that launched is creating new documents and spreadsheets on your phone. This is particularly useful to jot down quick notes on the run, whether it’s capturing that game-changing idea for your company while at the gym, or typing out your grocery list on the train ride home.

Head to docs.google.com from your mobile and tap the create new icon at the top of your mobile Docs List. From here, you can name the spreadsheet or document and get started editing immediately:

For now, we support certain mobile devices, though we're working hard to accommodate other platforms as well.

Creating a new doc is just one of several new features available on your mobile device, and we'd love to know how you're using your Docs on the go -- be sure to let us know in the comments.

Posted by: Bob Rose, Senior Software Engineer

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Editing your Google Docs on the go

Cross posted on the Official Google Blog, Google Enterprise Blog and the Google Mobile Blog

With Google Docs, we’re always trying to make you more productive—and part of that means making it possible for you to get things done from anywhere, at anytime. That’s why we’re excited that the new documents editor now supports editing on your mobile browser. We’re rolling this out over the next few days.

That means that...

• You can work on that important memo...while on the bus or train to work.
• If you’re behind on a group proposal, but really want to make it to the ball game tonight, your whole team can work on it from the bleacher seats.
• You can take minute-by-minute notes at a concert so you’ll always remember the setlist. And your friends can jealously follow in real-time at home.
• ...and the list goes on!

Take a look at this video to see mobile editing in action:



It’s easy to get started: visit docs.google.com in a browser on a supported device, and select the document you want to edit. Then, when you’re viewing it, press the Edit button to switch to the mobile editor.

In the next few days, we’re rolling this out to English-language users around the world on Android with Froyo (version 2.2) and on iOS devices (version 3.0+) including the iPad. We’ll be adding support for other languages soon. And as before, we also support editing of spreadsheets from your mobile device’s browser.

We hope you enjoy editing your documents on the go—especially when you’re at the game with a hot dog in your other hand.

Posted by: Andrew Grieve, Software Engineer

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Faster typing, fewer mistakes

With Google Docs we try to make writing a document as easy and as fast as possible. Yesterday, we added two new auto-correction features to speed up your document writing.

LaTeX shortcuts in equations
Until now, the only way to enter an equation in documents was to create the equation from the Insert menu, and then use the equation toolbar to choose your symbols.

The toolbar makes it easy to discover which types of equations are possible.

Today we’re making it a little easier for users to quickly type equations using LaTeX equation shortcuts. For anyone who heard of LaTeX before, it’s a document markup language that’s often used by academics to quickly type out complex formulas. In Google Docs, when you’re inside an equation you can type '\sqrt' followed by a space or a parenthesis to automatically convert the text into a square root sign √. Other examples of useful shortcuts are '\frac' for a fraction and shorthands like '\epsilon' for Greek symbols.

If you want to quickly enter a superscript or a subscript while inside an equation, you can do that with '^' and '_'respectively. Here’s a full list of the automatic equation shortcuts supported in Google Docs.

Text replacements
We also added the ability to substitute text automatically. For example, you can type '(c)' followed by a space to have it automatically converted into a copyright sign ©, or '2/3' and a space to have it automatically converted into the fraction symbol: ⅔.

This feature is especially useful if there are spelling mistakes that you notice yourself making over and over again. You can right click on a misspelled word, go down to the AutoCorrect option, and choose a way of automatically fixing this spelling mistake in the future.

If you don’t want text replacements, you can disable them from the Tools > Preferences dialog. From that dialog, you’ll also be able to manage your text replacements by adding and removing items from the list.

Finally, if a document ever makes an auto-correction that you don’t want, you can press Ctrl Z (Cmd Z on a Mac) to undo it.

We hope that these new features will help make you a speedier writer in Google Docs.

Posted by: Evgeniy Stepanov, Software Engineer

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New this week in Docs: auto-corrections, LaTeX in equations and images in cells

If you’re looking for more ways to speed up your typing or have been craving images in your spreadsheets, we have something for you this week. Auto-corrections and LaTeX shortcuts to equations speed up typing and reduce editing while images to cells make it easy to add color to your spreadsheets. These features are rolling out over the next couple of days.

We’ll be blogging about each feature in detail, but in the meantime here’s the quick digest version:

Auto-corrections
We’ve added a feature to substitute text automatically. For example, you can type '(c)' followed by a space to have it automatically converted into a copyright sign ©. You can also create your own custom auto-corrects.

LaTex in equations
If you’re familiar with LaTex, you’ll enjoy the many LaTeX shortcuts we added to the equation editor. For example, while editing an equation you can type '\frac' followed by a space and it will automatically be converted into an equation fraction.

Add images to cells
You can now add images to individual spreadsheet cells and choose from a variety of sizing options including size to fit, stretch, original size, and custom.

We’ve also got another feature ready to go for tomorrow so stay tuned.

Posted by: Lindsay Hall, Software Engineering Intern

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Tips & Tricks: Moving my files to the cloud

About a year ago, I started scanning and uploading all the important papers floating around my house into Google Docs. It seemed like an obvious solution to three things that drove me crazy:

• Clutter (I believe papers not only accumulate but secretly multiply)
• Access (I always need that bill/file that is at home and not at the office with me)
• Sharing (It’s a common occurrence that I need someone else to also look at that file, and that person is hardly ever with me at the office either.)

Scanning and uploading ended up being only half the battle. My house was cleaner, but my organizing and sharing work-flow was far from perfect. So, I developed a system in Google Docs to keep organized. Here are some tips & tricks that you may find useful:

Folders and sub-folders
What: With the Create New button in the upper left, you can create folders to organize your content. Click on your newly created folder on the left hand side of your document list. While you’re there, you can click Create New again to make a sub-folder within the first folder.
Tip: To minimize how many folders I see on the left hand side, I create general folder titles like Bills and Photos. I then use sub-folders for clearer classification like Electricity and Cell Phone under my ‘Bills’ folder. When I’m uploading a scanned document I’m able select the appropriate sub-folder right away.

Shared folders
What: Once you’ve created a folder, you can keep it for yourself, or share it with anyone. Right click on a folder, select Share, and choose the sharing option that best fits your need.
Tip: My husband and I compiled all of our immigration paperwork into one folder. Recently my brother took the plunge and also had to work his way through this process. By sharing my folder with him, it made it easier for him to see what was needed and simplified the process a bit (at least that’s what he told me...).

Managing document versions
What: Click on any file and select ‘Add or manage versions’ in order to upload and group different versions of the same document together.
Tip: While this is an ideal tool for a designer that wants to keep iterations of the same graphic in one place, I found my own everyday use for this feature. I keep track of items where the most recent has more importance than past ones. For example, I scan my taxes, and upload the oldest ones first so the newest one is visible, but I have the option to download past copies.

Exporting your files
What: Someone you know doesn’t live in the cloud? Gasp! No worries, I can easily export all the files in a folder. Just right-click the folder, choose Export, and click the Download button.
Tip: Taking this action will save a .zip file to my computer’s hard drive that I can then email to anyone who’s not as tech-savvy (though, I might have to unzip the file for them too!).

If you’re in the mood to give your filing cabinet the boot, chime in here with your own tips for moving your files to the cloud.

Posted by: Rebecca Steelman, Consumer Operations

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Tips & Tricks: Our favorite shade of beige, the ruler

Recently, we launched a rebuilt document editor from the ground up. Just like some colors stand out more than others, there are some features in the new editor that are particularly shiny. While features like real-time collaboration, more fonts, and an advanced revision history tool are like neon green, crimson red, and ultramarine, the ruler tends to be viewed more like a beige.

But the ruler, like beige, can certainly have its charms. You can use the ruler to position your text anywhere on the page. And that makes it a powerful tool.

There are a number of blue shapes on the ruler -- these affect the positioning of each paragraph, and are either indents or tab stops.


All paragraphs have three indents: the first line indent,the left indent, and the right indent.

Dragging the first line indent adjusts the left padding of the first line of a paragraph, while the left indent adjusts all subsequent lines of a paragraph. If you drag the left indent along the ruler, the first line indent will follow it. The right indent adjusts how far a paragraph extends toward the right side of the page.

Tab stops

Sometimes you need to control the display of your text with more granularity than what you can accomplish with just indents. That’s where tab stops come in handy.


With tab stops, you can align text relative to a specific spot on the ruler. So that means that a left tab stop will left align text to a position on the ruler, a right tab stop will right align text to a spot on the ruler, while a center tab stop will center-align the text.

To move between tab stops, you can press the tab key, and subsequent text will align with the tab stop. You can add multiple tab stops by clicking on a spot on the ruler and selecting the appropriate tab stop.

You can move the position of a tab stop by dragging it around the ruler. And to remove a tab stop, simply drag it off the ruler.

Margins

Tab stops and indents are great for adjusting individual paragraphs, but sometimes you want to change alignment for an entire document. For that, you can use margins.

You can adjust the left and right margins by dragging the gray space on either side of the ruler.

You can also adjust the left and right margins, as well as the top and bottom margins of your document from File -> Page setup.

Once you get going, like with beige, it’s a bit surprising all of the things you can do with the trusty ruler.

Posted by: Luiz Pereira, Software Engineer

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Google Docs on Twitter

Want to stay up-to-date on all the latest Google Docs news, tips and tricks? Follow us on Twitter http://twitter.com/googledocs

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Writing a campaign speech with Google Docs

A few months ago, my colleague Julia and I were at a technology conference for educators. Teachers were very enthusiastic when we demonstrated working together on documents at the same time and were really excited about how they could use it in their classrooms. What surprised us though, was how many of our favorite features - like working together at the same time - were brand new to them.

We knew we wanted to share that same excitement with even more people. Inspired by the Search Stories videos, we set off to tell a story using Google Docs. The result is this video:



We hope you enjoy seeing some of the cool features Google Docs offers in action. And if you think your friends would like it, show it to them too!

Posted by: Bryan Carroll, Consumer Operations Strategist, Google Docs

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Join the Docs Community on YouTube

Two years ago, we created the Google Docs Community on YouTube as a space to feature user-created videos about Google Docs. Today, we’re reviving the channel with new life and new videos from the community and the Google Docs team.

You’ll find videos ranging from helpful tutorials to creative testimonials in easy to browse playlists. On the channel, you can view Google Docs success stories:



And learn how to use features in Google Docs and Sites, ranging from basic editing to features used by our most advanced users:



You’ll even be able to check out new Google Docs and Sites features:



Check out the channel to connect with the Docs community and the Google Docs team, and learn tips and tricks. If you want to hear more, just click the subscribe button on the channel, and if you’d like to submit a video to share with the world, simply fill out this form.

Posted by: Julia Harter, Consumer Operations

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Recapping the Google Sites webinar

Guest post: Stephen Hind (commonly known as Steegle) has been a Top Contributor in the Google Sites help forum since its launch in January 2009. Top Contributors are Google-recognized participants of our help forums who exemplify excellent product knowledge, are consistently kind and respectful to others, and are helpful in the forum. He’s an avid user of Google Sites both professionally and personally, and creates and manages Google Sites for other businesses. His website (www.steegle.com) contains many FAQs and how-tos for Google Sites and receives 30,000 visits per month.

I began using Google Sites when it was first released for Google Apps in February 2008. When I created my first site, I saw that Google Sites offered the features I wanted on any site: a navigation gadget; a breadcrumb trail; a hierarchical structure; a simple editor; and a configurable look and feel. Since then, I’ve been offering support to other users because I enjoy helping others get the most out of their sites.

At the beginning of September, Google invited me to present a webinar as part of the Get British Business Online campaign (gbbo.co.uk) to demonstrate how to get more out of Google Sites. The webinar was offered three times that day maximize how many people could watch. During the webinar I presented on these topics:

• how to create and edit pages
• revert to previous versions of pages
• add a logo
• change and customise themes
• change site width
• edit sidebar and horizontal navigation
• add images directly and from Picasa Web Albums
• add gadgets for maps, contact us forms and videos.

After the presentation I held a Q&A session. Two questions surfaced in every session: “Why does my site not appear in Google Search?” and “How can I see how many people have visited my site?” I answered these by explaining how to register a Google Site with Google Webmaster Tools and demonstrating how to add Google Analytics to the site. It was great to offer these simple tips to help attendees guarantee the success of their own sites.

It was a wonderful opportunity to show others how Google Sites provides an easy and quick way to create informative and reliable websites. The feedback I received, and continue to get, gives me great encouragement to continue to help the Google Sites community, and I look forward to future opportunities to increase Google Sites usage.

Posted by: Stephen Hind, Google Sites Power User

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New in Google Docs and Google Sites

Two big advantages of building web applications are frequent feature releases and easier cross-product sharing. Today we have a little of both for you. This week, we are adding version history to uploaded files in the documents list as well as drop downs in horizontal navigation and a new sharing experience to Google Sites.

Version history
Earlier this year, we added the ability to “Upload any file” to Google Docs so that you upload, store, and share any file up to 1 GB in size. Now you can upload new versions of the same file to your document list. Previously, each time you updated a file, you would have to upload the new version as a new file with a new URL, re-share it, and put in the correct folders again.

When you select the “Add or manage versions” option on any file, you can upload new versions of a file, download previous versions, and delete older versions.

Drop down menu in horizontal navs
Sometimes, you want to group information using drop downs and now you can by going More actions > Manage site > Site layout.

New sharing experience
Back in June, we made sharing easier in Google Docs. Today, we extended this simplified sharing experience to Google Sites, unifying the sharing experience across Google Docs and Google Sites. As with Google Docs, Google Sites now be set to one of three visibility options: private, anyone with the link, or public on the web.

The new visibility option is always available at a glance at the top of each site.

With this update, the new “Anyone with the link” setting makes your site available to anyone that knows the unique URL, but blocks search engines from indexing the site. And for those times that someone sends you a link to a site but you don’t have access, you can now request access to that site from the access denied page.

As always, we’d love your feedback and if you have any questions, please check out our document list and Google Sites help pages.

Posted by: Mike Procopio, Software Engineer

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Guest post: Writing a book using Google Docs

Guest post: November is National Writing Month and to celebrate, we’ve invited Dr. Steven Daviss to talk about how he used Google Docs to write a book with two colleagues. Dr. Daviss is currently the Chairman of Psychiatry at Baltimore Washington Medical Center in Maryland and has been increasingly leveraging his clinical and administrative experience towards a career merging health care policy, informatics, and health care reform.


Two other psychiatrists (Anne Hanson and Dinah Miller) and I have been writing a popular blog (Shrink Rap) about the practice of psychiatry since 2006. A year later, we started a podcast (My Three Shrinks) that has received great reviews in iTunes. Late in 2007, we decided to take some of those posts and weave them together to write a book.

We started out using a desktop word processor to write the book, each chapter being a separate document. We learned about the limitations of making edits and sending out each of our revisions to the other two: we very quickly had multiple out-of-sync versions and the whole thing was a mess. This is from one of Dinah’s emails back then: “With 3 people doing this, I need to be able to keep track of what everyone wants to write. As I revise it, I'll change the file to reflect the date, but remember that if you and steve are sending me changes and edits simultaneously, I may not see them or it may get very confusing. Your color is red.”

After several weeks of this, we were all seeing red, which was causing a lot of unnecessary tension.

I had used Google Docs collaboratively before to write a couple articles and a few grant proposals, but wasn’t sure if we could successfully use it to write an entire 250-plus page book. But I knew it had to be better than what we were doing.

Once we switched to Google Docs, writing the book together became a much more fluid process because we were able to focus on the writing and not on the complications of getting the technology to keep up with us. We imported the first couple chapters and proceeded from there, making each chapter a separate document shared by the three of us and (eventually) our editor. We could write our own chapters privately until they were ready to show our co-authors, then sharing was as simple as clicking a couple buttons. Whenever we changed our minds about what to take out, we were able to restore sections from previously saved versions. We didn’t have to think about which version of word processing software someone was using, or if the documents would lose formatting between Mac and Windows. And, I could see when my co-authors were also working on the book, so I knew when to call and talk about the project.

Eighteen months after getting the book contract, we had a completed manuscript ready for copy editing.

Google Docs also helped to save our relationship. Initially, despite being good friends, the three of us had many conflicts about the technology and about the way we wanted to write (e.g., grammar, tense, tone, characters). When we were using emailed versions of documents, our arguments increased. After switching to Google Docs, we went back to our usual level of bickering ;-).

The book is being typeset now by Johns Hopkins University Press and will be out in May of 2011. And we have Google Docs to thank.

Posted by: Steve Daviss MD

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