Word Search 2.0 for Kindergartners

Posted by: Jonathan Rochelle, Product Manager - Google Docs & Spreadsheets

My six-year-old came home from school the other day asking me all kinds of questions about this word search puzzle he got from his teacher. It had a theme based on one of our favorite authors (Dr. Seuss) and had that tell-tale grainy look of something that has been photo-copied over and over (for several years no doubt) -- and he loved it!

Like most kindergartners on a mission, he is relentless in his pursuit of information: "How did she make this?", "How did she get the words and letters in there?", "I can tell it was done on a computer, Daddy - do we have the program that makes these?" -- and it didn't stop there.

"Google Spreadsheets!" I said with honest enthusiasm. "Are you kidding?" he said, with a hopeful grin. So we quickly pulled up his Google Docs & Spreadsheets account (yes, he has one - on his own domain under Google Apps!) and we created a spreadsheet... It was a simple grid of squares. We filled in each box with a single letter until all the words he wanted were there - actually, just check it out yourself, below!


(yes! you can embed a published spreadsheet in a blog entry!)

We printed a bunch of copies for him and his friends and even created and printed a teacher's version (with all the hidden words highlighted in yellow). It was perfect!

Now I just have to teach him the API so he can auto-generate the word search puzzle! Nah... I'll wait until he's in the first grade - he needs a break ;)

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Going to work with Docs & Spreadsheets

Posted by: David Kuettel & Isaac Shum, Software Engineers, Google Docs & Spreadsheets

Corporate workers have experienced the pain of document collaboration for years. Nobody could find the latest version of that important spreadsheet. You were on a sales call and that proposal you needed was stuck on your work computer. Your email inbox was full of everybody's document edits. All that changed with Docs & Spreadsheets. But we kept hearing the same thing from business users - "how do I get everybody in my company using this?" As of today, the answer is easy: Google Apps.

Google Apps lets you offer private-labeled email, instant messaging and calendar accounts to everyone in your organization so they can share ideas and work more effectively. As of today, Google Apps now includes Docs & Spreadsheets. The Google Apps version works just like the Docs & Spreadsheets you know and love but with a few special new features like the ability to publish a document only to your co-workers and support for making everyone in your company a collaborator. Everything is hosted by Google, and no hardware or software is required. Check it out: we think you'll agree that we look pretty dapper in a suit and tie.

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Hello World

Posted by: Ken Norton

Dokumenty i Arkusze. That's Polish for Docs & Spreadsheets. I know that because D&S has been pretty popular in Poland since we launched. We've actually been quite popular all around the world, but until now we've offered an English-only experience.

I'm happy to announce that we've just launched Docs & Spreadsheets in 12 new languages. The languages we've added are: French, Italian, German, Spanish, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Korean, Turkish, Dutch, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian and - you guessed it - Polish. If your favorite language isn't listed here, we've got an additional 18 languages in our spell-checker. You can select your language by clicking "Settings" inside Docs & Spreadsheets.

And if you haven't checked out the Google Toolbar Beta 3 for Firefox with integrated support for Docs & Spreadsheets, you can now download it in all of the same languages.

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Docs & Spreadsheets integrates with Gmail

Posted by: Ken Norton

We know many Google Docs & Spreadsheets fans are also Gmail users. We've heard from scores of you since we launched Docs & Spreadsheets, and the most common request is for more integration between the two products. It comes as no surprise -- everyone gets heaps of docs in their email. Until recently, if you received a document attached to an email message and wanted to import it into D&S, it was a convoluted process -- download the attachment to your desktop, then upload it to D&S. No more. Now the Gmail team has launched a one-click import feature that you'll really appreciate.

Whenever those of you who use Gmail receive a spreadsheet or a document in an email, you will see a new link next to the "Download" link that says "Open as a Google document." Click on that and the attachment will automatically be imported into Docs & Spreadsheets and added to your personal document list where you can make changes, invite collaborators and search for it later. We hope you like it.



As always, we'll be monitoring discussion group and support email for your feedback.

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Collaboration worldwide

Posted by: Ken Norton, Product Manager, Google Docs & Spreadsheets

Whether you're sitting in the same room, across campus, or in different countries, you can collaborate with others using Google Docs & Spreadsheets. If you're using the application, and you live outside the U.S. or you're working with people outside of the U.S., we'd love to hear from you about what you're up to. So far we've heard from authors, college students, dragstrip operators, police officers, and even fantasy baseball league members.

Post your story here in our Google Group and while you're at it, check out other stories as well.

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Dragging and dropping

Posted by: Ken Norton, Product Manager, Google Docs & Spreadsheets

Have you ever come across a link to a document on the web and wished you could open it directly with Google Docs & Spreadsheets? The process until now has been somewhat convoluted -- you needed to save the file to your desktop, then upload it to Google Docs & Spreadsheets. What a drag. Wouldn't it be nice to save a few steps, and turn that drag into drag-and-drop? Thanks to our friends on the Google Toolbar team, you can.

We just launched Google Toolbar 3 Beta for Firefox, and it includes some very cool features for Google Docs & Spreadsheets users. With those features enabled, you can open most popular file types in Google D&S. Clicking a link to a file on a web page will open the document directly in your browser window. Even cooler, you can drag file icons from your desktop to your browser and have them automatically imported into D&S. Once you've installed the beta, enable these features from the "Options" menu of your Toolbar.

Being able to drag and drop files directly has really streamlined my day. Maybe I can even use that free time to catch up on my holiday shopping. And since you asked, Google Docs & Spreadsheets is a handy way to manage your shopping lists!

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Young puppy, new tricks...

Posted by: John Danaher, Software Engineer in Google's NYC office

As a web application, Google Docs & Spreadsheets can do all sorts of neat things. Of course, easy sharing and collaborative editing are the most obvious benefits, but this young puppy is learning some new tricks (of course, I'll mention the two closest to my heart first ;-) ).

One is GoogleLookup, which attempts to answer your questions by using information from the web. You can use it for all kinds of party tricks, like looking up the population of New York City [=GoogleLookup("New York City", "population")] or when Google was founded [=googlelookup("google", "founded")]. Try it to see what other things you can look up. I'll warn you in advance, it's a bit addicting. If you mouse over the cell, you'll see links to the source pages where we found the data, so you can always check out the primary sources. And don't forget you can copy/paste (ctrl-c / ctrl-v) the formula to other cells to easily have a bunch of GoogleLookups in a sheet. Don't expect to change the world with this function, but have fun with it.

While GoogleLookup covers a little bit of everything, its sibling GoogleFinance focuses just on financial data from Google Finance. Using a similar syntax, you can look up the price of Google stock [=GoogleFinance("GOOG")] or the 52-week high of Apple [=GoogleFinance("AAPL", "HIGH52")]. And since stock prices tend to change more often than, say, the capital of California does, we update them in your spreadsheet automatically. So if you leave your portfolio spreadsheet open, you should see numbers get updated as you would on Google Finance itself. Of course, we also have the same 20-minute delay on financial data.

So as GoogleLookup and Google Finance let you pull data from the web into your spreadsheet, we've also make it easier to put your data back out onto the web by publishing it. If you go to the "Publish" tab at the upper-right of your spreadsheet, you can publish your entire spreadsheet (or just one sheet of it) so that other people can view it as HTML, PDF, or even as an Atom or RSS feed. You can finally share your spreadsheets with others without them having to sign in to their Google Account. And if you go to the "more publishing options" link, you'll find some other cool options (duh!).

Besides a few other handy small features, there's one more worth mentioning: revisions. If you (or one of your 'trusted collaborators') makes a mistake in a spreadsheet which our usually-friendly autosave feature picks up, you can go back to prior versions of your spreadsheet using the "Revisions" tab. That'll come in handy, I promise.

So have fun, and please let us know what you think by
making suggestions, or discussing these features with others.

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