Documents dress up and print out

Posted by: David Kuettel, Software Engineer, Google Docs

A Google document's natural habitat is online, and in the past, this is where it stayed. While it was possible to print a Google document, it was admittedly difficult to predict what the printed page was going to look like -- kind of like stepping out for an evening without knowing what you're wearing until you get out the door, an option that makes staying in pretty tempting.

Not that staying in is a bad option, of course. If you're a Google document, home means being safe and instantly accessible, never having to worry about the life-threatening disaster of a hard drive crash, or the pain of packing up and moving as multiple versions are emailed to and from multiple collaborators -- in short, a life of leisure!

Because of this, there are many Google documents that will never want to leave their online oasis. However, there are also documents that need to make an appearance in the "real world."

We hear from students and teachers, lawyers and accountants. They all let us know that keeping and sharing their documents online made their jobs infinitely easier. But they also made it clear that the end result of their work needed to be a well-formatted paper document, printed and presented outside of Google Docs' online home.

We took this seriously, and now we're introducing better printing for Google documents and the option to set the following specifications for your printed documents:

• Margins
• Page numbers
• Landscape or portrait page orientation
• Legal, Letter, or A4 paper size

So, while documents will always make their home online, we're happy to announce that for those of you with a need, Google documents can now come out to play. Right out of your printer and on to your desk, or your boss's desk, or your teacher's folder, or your client's briefcase...printed documents are here!

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Teaching revision writing with Docs

Posted by: Cristin Frodella, Product Manager, Education Initiatives

Some of Google Docs' most loyal users are teachers; we get lots of emails, suggestions, and lesson ideas from you. Based on what you've told us, one of your favorite things about using Docs with your students is that they tend to work harder if their work is transparent to each other. They react well to seeing one another's writing and getting the opportunity to show off just a teeny bit. We've also learned that "writing buddy" programs give kids the opportunity to brainstorm with and inspire one other, while letting them learn crucial editing and interpersonal skills.

Google for Educators has buddied up with the good folks from the Weekly Reader to bring you a lesson on revision writing -- with a buddy. The talented writers at Weekly Reader have worked with teachers all over the country to come up with tips and checklists for incorporating buddy writing in the classroom. And as always, Google Docs allows your students to create their first drafts, fix their mistakes and hone the perfect paper, all while keeping track of each and every comma change, word replacement and new stroke of genius along the way.

Come check out the lesson, grab a few hints on using Google Docs and introduce your kids to buddy writing -- we suspect their collaborations will get your creative juices flowing, too.

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Get Docs in 38 languages

Posted by: Ken Norton, Product Manager, Google Docs

Earlier today we launched Google Docs in 13 more languages, bringing our total number of supported languages to 38. That means 99% of the world's Internet users can collaborate in a version of Docs fully localized to their native language.

The new languages are: Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Filipino, Greek, Hindi, Latvian, Lithuanian, Portuguese (Portugal), Romanian, Serbian, Slovak, and Slovenian.

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Docs on the go

Posted by: Zach Lloyd, Software Engineer - Google spreadsheets

I track a lot of work related tasks on spreadsheets that are shared with other engineers, and I often like to know if anyone has updated them while I'm away from my computer. Until now, this was pretty much impossible.

Enter Google Docs for your mobile phone. If you have an iPhone, Blackberry, or Windows Mobile device, you can now point your phone's browser to http://docs.google.com/m to view (no editing yet - sorry), mobile-optimized versions of your docs, spreadsheets, and even presentations (for iPhone only for now). You might have to squint a little, and it's only for English-language users for now, but the information is all there, in your pocket, wherever you are. Now you'll have no excuse not to pick up the milk that was added to that shared grocery list while you were out (huh? You don't have a shared grocery list yet?)

It was a real challenge coming up with useful views, especially of spreadsheets, that would work on the inherently limited screen size and the (um, how to say it nicely) often finicky mobile browsers - but go ahead and give it a shot, and please tell us what you think on the help group.

We've also introduced a few other features... Now you can format spreadsheet cells based on rules. For example, the cell could turn red if it contains a date prior to today. It's a really nice way of quickly seeing the state of a complex or quickly changing sheet - works great for all my overdue tasks! We've also (finally) introduced a way of hiding (and un-hiding) rows and columns. It's always nice to eliminate clutter. Check out all the recent changes on the description on the help group or our new features page.

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And now we present...

Posted by: Jeff Grimes, Software Engineer

Earlier this year, we told you that in addition to documents and spreadsheets, we'd soon be adding support for presentations as well. We know you've been waiting, and today we're excited to invite you to try out presentations for yourself at http://documents.google.com.

Just like Google documents and spreadsheets, presentations are stored securely online, so you can access them from anywhere using only a web browser. Working together with one or more people to put together a killer presentation? Not a problem, just like with documents and spreadsheets, you can collaborate with others and see everyone's changes in real time. If you're new to Google Docs, check out this video to learn more:



If you're starting your presentation from scratch, you can pick from several pre-defined themes and layouts; if you already have a presentation, you can import that as well. Once you've started, you can easily add additional text and images, and of course, you can move and resize everything so that it looks just the way you want.

When you're ready to share your presentation with your friends, customers, or even the world, it's easy to do using the familiar Google Docs interface. You can even walk your audience through the slides online in real time. Participants simply click a link to join and follow along, and everyone can chat about the presentation together.

We're excited about making presentations available today in response to your requests, and we're looking forward to rolling out updates and improvements to this feature over the coming months. Or, as my son likes to say, "Google. Slide. Weee!" We hope you'll feel the same way.

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Please see: http://google-d-s.blogspot.com.

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Lazy Wednesday...

Posted by: Andy Bonventre, Engineer - spreadsheets team

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...

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