Google Rolls Out Updates to Docs, Sites

Preview your docs in thumbnails, upload up to 1GB of files at a time, and other updates enhance your experience when using Docs and Sites.

On their blog earlier this week Google announced some exciting new features in Google Docs and Google Sites. New features released to both platforms are aimed at improving the overall user experience.

Updates to Docs:

• Users may now choose to view their documents in the standard detail list, or in a thumbnail view that lets the user preview the document before opening it.
• The document search function now includes spelling suggestions; this works just like the spelling corrections in Google Search. When you enter a misspelled word in the search box, Docs will prompt you with a different spelling.
  
• Upload documents up to 1GB in size. This is an increase from the current 250MB limit.

These updates affect all editions of Google Docs, including Standard, Premier, Education, Team and Partner Editions.

To access the new features:

• Thumbnail view can be opened by clicking the new thumbnail icon located in the view options at the top right of the documents list panel.
  
• Google Docs search automatically offers a suggestion for the correct spelling of a word if you make a mistake entering it into the search field.
  
• Any document that is not being converted to a Google Doc has a file size limit of 1GB.

For more information about new features in docs, visit Google's Docs blog: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/01/thumbnail-is-worth-about-one-hundred.html

Updates to the Sites API:

• Copy sites and site templates using the site feed. It also now allows you to list, update, and create sites.
• Permissions can now be managed through the Access Control List (ACL). This means that sharing settings can be configured through the API.

To take advantage of updates to the API update the code at http://code.google.com/apis/sites.

For more information about new features in Sites, visit Google's Sites blog: http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2010/01/create-and-share-google-sites-with-new.html

For more information on getting started with Google Apps, please click here or call 866-997-0000, option 3.

Google Apps Updates: Enhancements to Google Docs

Google Docs editors are now more consistent across each product. The links, title area, menus, menu terminology, and toolbar are now nearly uniform across documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Editions included: Standard, Premier, Education, Team and Partner Editions Languages included: All languages supported by Google Docs For more information: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2009/10/google-docs-now-more-consistent.html Get these product update alerts by email Subscribe to the RSS feed of these updates

Google Apps: New features in Google Docs

Google has added some new features to the Docs list:

- New export features which allow you to select multiple documents, convert them into your chosen format and download them as a zip file.
- Indicators to show if a document has been viewed already or not.
- A 'New!' indicator that shows you when a new document has been shared with you.

Editions included:
Standard, Premier, Education, Team and Partner Editions

Languages included:
All languages supported by Google Docs

How to access what's new:
-Select one or more files and then click on "Export" from the "More Actions" menu. Next, pick the format (e.g. PDF, Microsoft Word, etc) you want for your exported files. Finally, click "Continue" and it will create a zip file to download that has all your content. You can "export" up to 500 MB of content in a single zip file. It can sometimes take a few minutes to download so you also have an "email when ready" option to notify you when the zip file is ready.

- "Unviewed" files are in bold, while "viewed" files are not. You can toggle this setting by selecting the item and clicking on "mark as (Un)Viewed" in the "More Actions" menu.

- When an item is first shared to you, it will be bold ("Unviewed") and marked as "New!". Once you view this item, it's listed normally. If the item is updated by someone else, then it will be marked as "Unviewed" again.

For more information:
http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2009/10/data-liberation-mark-as-viewed-and-new.html

More Google Apps Functions! Translation in Google Spreadsheets!

You can now use functions in spreadsheets that can automatically detect and translate languages. Editions included: Standard, Premier, Education, Team and Partner Editions Languages included: All languages supported by Google Spreadsheets How to access what's new: To detect and translate languages on a spreadsheet, use the new functions: =GoogleTranslate("field one","field two","field three") =DetectLanguage("field one") For the translate function, the fields should contain a combination of the text you want to translate, the two letter language code of the text and the language code you want the text to be translated into. For the detection function, simply enter the text in the field and it will output the two letter language code of the text. For more information: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2009/10/translation-functions-in-spreadsheets.html

Published Google Docs Now Available Via Google Search

Google has announced that in a few weeks, documents, spreadsheets and presentations that have been explicitly published outside your organization and are linked to from a public website will be crawled and indexed, which means they can appear in search results you see on Google.com and other search engines. There is no change for documents published inside your organization or shared privately.

If you wish to prevent users from publishing documents to the public internet, we now offer an admin control in the Google Apps Control Panel that allows users to continue to 'share documents outside the domain' without allowing them to publish the files to the public Internet.  To change this setting, follow these steps:

- Login to your admin control panel
- Select Service Settings > Docs
- Un-check the option 'Users can publish documents to the public internet'

If a user does not want their published Docs to be crawled, then the user must unpublish them by doing the following:

- Go to the 'Share tab'
- For documents and spreadsheets, choose 'Publish as web page'. For presentations choose 'Publish/embed'
- Click on the button that says 'Stop publishing'

For more details, please see this Help Center article: http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=60781

This is a very exciting change as your published docs linked to from public websites will reach a much wider audience of people!


If you'd like to learn the advantages to using Google Docs and the entire Google Apps suite of products give us a call here at SADA at 866.997.0000.

Arial and Times New Roman fonts in Google Docs

Arial and Times New Roman fonts are now available in the text editor in Google Docs for users who have these fonts locally installed on their computers.

Editions included:
Standard, Premier, Education, Team and Partner Editions

Languages included:
All languages supported by Google Docs

How to access what's new:
Arial and Times New Roman will appear in the font drop-down from the menu bar if these fonts are detected as being locally installed on your computer.

Google Adds Multiple Inboxes to Gmail, Print Preview to Google Docs

The prolific team at Google Labs make new features available in Gmail, Google Apps adds print preview to Google Docs.

Google continues to drive innovation in cloud computing and web-based email. This week Google announced the availability of multiple inboxes in Gmail, and print preview to Google Docs.

Multiple Inboxes:

This feature allows you to create multiple inbox type views of the contents of your mail in Gmail. To activate this feature in your Gmail account only takes a few simple steps. To turn on Gmail's multiple inboxes you need to do the following:

• Log into Gmail.
• Locate and click the settings link.
• When the page reloads, locate and click the labs tab.
• Under labs locate multiple inboxes and change the setting to enable.

"Multiple Inboxes" then becomes a tab in your settings that you can use to configure your inboxes. You can set your inboxes with arguments including "is:" and "Label:". For instance, if you want to be able to see all of your starred messages in a single place you might create an inbox with the value "is: starred."

While you are viewing the labs tab you might take the opportunity to explore some of the other features developed for Gmail by Google Labs. Some suggestions for handy Gmail features include:

• Offline: view your messages in Gmail even when not connected to the Internet
• Tasks: create a task chat-window in your Gmail and add tasks directly from messages by selecting "More Actions" and clicking add to tasks.
• Forgotten attachment detector: Gmail helps you to remember your attachments by reading your message. If your text refers to an attached file, but there is no attachment present, Gmail will remind you to attach your files (this author's favorite new feature).

Print Preview:

A feature in Docs that was notable for its absence for a long time was the ability to create a preview of what a document will look like once it has been printed. This functions somewhat like Print Preview in desktop applications such as Microsoft Word. When working with a document Print Preview can be used to see a document before it is printed, or it can be used to get a page count.

For more information click here .

Google Introduces "Print Layout" to Docs!

Thursday morning I was working in a few different Google Docs, gathering information and collaborating with my co-workers when I noticed something different about the next doc I opened up.

The document was in a fixed-width page view; that is the document essentially looked like how it will on the printed page.

Google quietly released this new feature (similar to print layout in Microsoft Word) that gives you the option of viewing your document in either the fixed-width view or normal or "plain" view (the equivalent of web layout in Word). To choose between either, just click on the View menu tab in docs.

Google is continually enhancing and improving Google Apps and updates are delivered without you having to install, patch or do anything. In my view, that's pretty neat!

For more information about Google Apps, please visit goZEROi.com!

Offline Google Docs: They're Here!

We all know how great it is to create and collaborate online with Google Docs. But of course the greatest part of Google Docs - the Internet connection - is also a real downside when you don't have it. But not anymore!

Google Docs is slowly rolling out an "unplugged" option. Using the Google Gears platform, a limited number of you (and more of you soon!) will have the option to save and work on Google Docs locally when you have no Internet connection. So if you're on a plane, at your folks' cabin in the mountains or the barista accidentally plugs the espresso machine into the wireless router, you can still work.

The offline version of Docs currently only supports the English language and is not extended to Google Spreadsheets or Presentations. But that will come later. Offline Google Docs pretty much works in the background - your docs are synced with your Google Apps account as soon as you have an Internet connection again.

For more information about using the power of Google Docs online or offline please contact us here at SADA Systems, Inc. at 818.766.2400.