Template spotlight: Party RSVP form

The Google Docs team is celebrating the holidays, and over the next week, we'll be highlighting some of our favorite holiday templates.

If you're planning a holiday party this holiday season, this Party RSVP form template makes it easy to gather the info you need without having to email back and forth with each person you've invited. As with all forms in Google Docs, your guests' RSVPs are automatically recorded in a spreadsheet connected to your form.



If you want to use a different theme for your RSVP form, you can start from this template, and if you're planning a company party, try this template out.

Posted by: Peter Harbison, Product Marketing Manager

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Happy holidays from the Picasa team

A lot of people who Google Docs also use Picasa Web Albums, so we wanted to let you know about a special offer. We made extra storage for Gmail and Picasa Web Albums more affordable about a month ago, and now we've partnered with Eye-Fi to make it even easier to get your photos into the cloud. Eye-Fi offers WiFi-enabled memory cards that let your existing camera access wireless networks, so it's easy to upload photos and videos right to Picasa Web Albums or straight to your computer -- no cables required. For a limited time, when you buy 200 GB of Google paid storage for $50, you'll get a free Eye-Fi card (a $95 value) with free shipping.

Visit picasa.google.com/eyefi.html to get yours today, and happy holidays from the Picasa team!


Posted by: Zach Yeskel, Product Marketing Manager

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New legal templates by RocketLawyer.com™

Guest post: Rob Elhardt is the Senior VP of Product Management at RocketLawyer.com. Bringing easy legal documents to more people is Rob’s passion, and here’s what he told us about the new RocketLawyer.com legal templates in Google Docs. RocketLawyer.com legal templates, and the information contained in them: (a) are meant to serve as suggestions only; and (b) are not a substitute for professional advice or specific, authoritative knowledge or direction.

Did you know that you can choose from 76 new RocketLawyer.com™ legal form templates to help you get started with your next legal task in Google Docs? In addition to personal legal forms like Living Wills for all 50 states, there are many legal templates covering business contracts, real estate, and more.

Here are a few of the new RocketLawyer.com legal templates that I'd like to highlight. Please remember that these legal document templates are provided for reference and covers a common scenario that may not be right for you.

Template: California Living Will
Area of Law: Estate Planning
You can use this Living Will template to specify your health care preferences and to choose someone to make health care decisions for you if you are unable to do so. This template combines the best features of a living will and a health care power of attorney. Living Wills are available for all 50 states.

Template: Simple Promissory Note
Area of Law: Personal and Business
You can use this Promissory Note template to loan or borrow money. It states the terms, rights and obligations that apply to a loan. It specifies the amount of the loan, the interest rate, the repayment terms and includes other specific provisions.

Template: Non Disclosure Agreement (Unilateral)
Area of Law: Business
You can use a Non Disclosure Agreement template to help protect your proprietary and confidential information. In this agreement, a party agrees not to disclose certain information received from another party.

You can browse the complete list of RocketLawyer.com legal templates in Google Docs.

Posted by: Rob Elhardt, Senior VP of Product Management, RocketLawyer.com

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Holiday themes and templates in Google Docs

The Google Docs team is celebrating the holiday season with holiday themes in Google forms and holiday templates in the Google Docs template gallery.

Whether you are planning a recipe swap, family potluck, ski trip, a charity trip or need a party RSVP form, the new holiday themes in forms can make this season a little brighter. To try out the holiday themes, create a form and the click "Theme: theme name" to see all the themes that are available.


There are also a lot of great holiday templates available in the Google Docs template gallery. Templates include holiday shopping lists, holiday newsletters, party invitations, RSVP forms and much more.

Not sure where to start? We'll be highlighting some of our favorite holiday templates over the next week, so stay tuned.

Posted by: Eric Bogs and Bob Rose, Software Engineers, Google Docs

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Co-editor presence for Google Docs presentation slides and elements

Most of you know that when you co-edit a Google Docs spreadsheet, you can see the cells other people are editing. That presence information helps you simultaneously edit without stepping on each others' toes.

Today, we launched real time presence to Google Docs presentations as well. Now, when editing a presentation with a co-editor, you can see which slides he is editing, and if he is editing the same slide, then you can see which element -- text box, shape, image, video, etc -- he is editing.

Happy collaborating, and we'd love your feedback on our forum and ideas page.

Posted by: Roshni Malani, Software Engineer

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Google Docs viewer Chrome extension

The Google Chrome team launched beta support for extensions on Tuesday. We didn't want to miss the extension party, so we created a Google Docs extension. The Google Docs PDF/Powerpoint Viewer makes it easy to preview PDFs, Powerpoint presentations, and other documents you find across the web in the Google Docs viewer, instead of downloading them.

Let us know how you like the extension and what you like to see us add by posting a review on our extension's page.

Note that extensions are currently available only for the beta channel of Google Chrome for Windows and Linux.

Happy viewing!

Posted by: Wes Carr and Jesse Kinkead, Software Engineers, Google Docs

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Sharing emails get a facelift

Starting today, more colorful emails might be waiting in your friends' and colleagues' inboxes if you've shared Google documents with them. Check out the difference:

Old Email
New Email
In addition to the visual update, the new emails showcase your custom message rather than placing it at the bottom. Your buddy won't miss that important note about your shared document being a work of fiction (sound familiar?), because it's now prominently featured.

No more hunting for links either, just click the header:

Or, if multiple docs are shared, peruse a simple list:

The email's color and icon indicate the type of document at-a-glance:

Spreadsheets
Presentations
We know you're mighty busy, so we're always looking for ways to make Google Docs quicker and easier to use and share. Let us know what you think on the forums.

Posted by: Vance Vagell, User Interface Software Engineer

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