Google Docs

Document translation

You can now translate your documents in the new editor into one of the 53 Google Docs languages by selecting Tools -> Translate document.... From there, you can create a translated copy of the document by choosing a title for the translated document and selecting the language you want to translate into.


Undo smartquotes

When you type a quote character (') in Google Docs we automatically make it a smartquote (‘) which indicates its direction. If you don’t want a smart quote, you can press Ctrl Z (Cmd Z on a Mac) after you type it and the smartquote will become a regular quote. We’ll be adding a preference soon that lets you permanently disable smartquotes.

Let us know what you think on the forums.

Posted by: Lily Xia, Software Engineer

Have you been frustrated trying to find the populations or capitals of a list of countries? Would you like to easily get a list of the birthdays of all of your favorite musicians and actors? The GoogleLookup function in Google spreadsheets does all of the work, and in a matter of seconds you have all of the information you want. Using the information collected from the Web using Google Search, the GoogleLookup function finds the values for straightforward facts about specific things.

To use the GoogleLookup function, enter the following formula in the desired spreadsheet cell:

• =GoogleLookup(“entity” ; “attribute”) where “entity” represents the name of the entity you want to access and “attribute” is the type of information that you want to retrieve.

For example, I want to know the atomic number of gold. In this case, gold is the entity while atomic number is the attribute. In the desired cell, I enter =GoogleLookup(“Gold” , “Atomic Number”). Be sure to include quotation marks around both the entity and the attribute.

The atomic number of gold, 79, then shows up in the cell in which the formula was entered.

After experimenting with one GoogleLookup formula, I’d like to apply the formula to a larger list of elements, and also get information on the atomic weight. Instead of typing the formula out like before, I want to click the cell of the first entity in my list, in this case it’s gold. Next, I want to reference the cell in which I name the attribute I’m looking up, in this case, atomic number. Then I want to freeze the appropriate rows and columns with the “$” symbol.

Freezing the appropriate row and column allows me to drag the formula across to the “Atomic Weight” column and down the other rows to apply the formula to all of the other entities. When I apply the formula to all of the other cells, the results will show.

Keep in mind that while the GoogleLookup function knows quite a bit, it doesn't know everything. Although not all of the formulas you try will work, we encourage you to experiment. When GoogleLookup isn't sure if an answer isn't the best one for your entry, you'll see a dialog box with a handful of possible answers that you can choose from. Just select the cell and click More Options... to select a different value.

Here are a few more examples of entities you can access using the GoogleLookup formula, and a few popular attributes:

• Countries and Territories (like "Burkina Faso"): population, capital, largest city, gdp
• U.S. States (like "Tennessee"): area, governor, nickname, flower
• Rivers (like "Amazon River"): origin, length
• Cities and Towns (like "Chicago"): state, mayor, elevation
• Musicians (like "John Lennon"): date of birth, place of birth, nationality
• Politicians (like "Anwar Al-Sadat"): date of birth, place of birth, nationality
• Baseball Players (like "Wade Boggs"): games, at bats, earned run average, position
• Chemical Compounds (like "Isopropyl Alcohol"): chemical formula, melting point, boiling point, density
• Stars (like "Betelgeuse"): constellation, distance, mass, temperature
• Planets (like "Saturn"): number of moons, length of day, distance from sun, atmosphere
• Dinosaurs (like "Velociraptor"): height, weight, when it lived
• Ships (like "USS Chesapeake"): length, displacement, complement, commissioned
• Companies (like "Hewlett-Packard"): employees, ceo, ticker

Checkout the video below to see the GoogleLookup function in action and don't forget to give it a try to see what kind of facts you can find.



Posted by: Julia Harter, Consumer Operations Associate

With new site templates being created every day, there are times when you find the theme you want after you have already created your site. Based on your feedback, we added the ability to apply a site template’s theme to any existing site. To choose from the 100s of themes in the public theme gallery, select Browse the theme gallery from the Themes page (Manage site -> Themes), and start browsing.



Try it out and let us know what you think on the forums.

Posted by: Eric Zhang, Software Engineer

Have you ever tried looking for a document or spreadsheet from a particular time or from a certain person about a specific topic? Let’s say you’re a rocket scientist and you’re looking for the presentation about “Prototype rockets with lasers” that your manager sent you last year.

Normally, you’d just search for [rockets lasers prototypes]. But, lets face it, you’re a rocket scientist so you get lots of matching results; just about every document you have is about rockets or lasers.

You could narrow the search in the advanced search menu or you can use Search Operators and refine the search directly in the search box:

• Quotes for exact phrase matching. Example: [ "match this phrase exactly" ]
• OR to allow either one of several words. Example: [ "rockets" OR "shuttles" ]
• Items without a certain word: [ rocket -man ] will return docs that mention rocket, but not rocket man.
• Items you shared with, or had shared with you: [ from:ted@rocketsnlasers.com ] or [ to:ted@rocketsnlasers.com ]
• Starred or Hidden items: [ is:starred ] or [ is:hidden ]

And we recently added a some new search operators:

• Type of doc: [ type:{document, spreadsheet, presentation} ]
• Items edited before (or after) a certain day: [ before:YYYY-MM-DD, after:YYYY-MM-DD ]
• Items owned by Ted: [ owner:ted@rocketsnlasers.com ]
• Items with “rocket” in the title: [ title:rocket ]; [ subject:rocket ] does the same thing

Now you, the rocket scientist, should be able to easily find your boss’ presentation by searching for [ rocket laser prototypes from:overhead@rocketsnlasers.com before:2010-01-01 type:presentation ].

Posted by: Vivek Haldar, Software Engineer

In April, we launched a new version of Google spreadsheets. One new feature that helps organize your data is advanced sorting rules.

Sorting a selection
With the new sorting capabilities, you can sort a small selection of cells without affecting the rest of your spreadsheet. In my triathlon spreadsheet, for example, I could sort only the selection about running while leaving the biking and swimming sections intact. First, I highlight the range of cells in my spreadsheet about running.


Then, I go to the Tools menu and select Sort. Now I can set a sorting rule. In this case, I'd like to sort my running races by date.


Last, I click the Sort button, and my running times are organized by date.


Setting multiple sorting rules
The new sorting feature also allows you to set more than one sorting rule for any given selection of cells. If you select just the data about running again, you can sort first by distance and then by time to more easily see your average time. Click +Add another to add additional sorting rules.


Sorting the entire sheet
Alternatively, you can sort the entire sheet. Click the square in the top left corner of your spreadsheet to select all cells in your spreadsheet. Once you’ve selected all of the cells in your sheet, you can set your sorting rules in the same way as sorting a selection.


A detailed look at sorting
The title of your sorting pop-up will tell you what range of cells you have highlighted to be sorted. If it's wrong, click Cancel and try again. If your columns have titles, you'll want to check the Data has header row box. Next, you'll be able to choose what columns you'd like to sort by in the drop down menu next to sort by. If you'd like to add multiple rules, click +Add another until you're done setting your sorting rules. When you're done, click the Sort button, and voila!


Advanced sorting rules and other new features aren't available if you've switched back to the old version of Google spreadsheets. If you have switched, you can easily return to the new version by clicking 'New version' in the top right corner of your browser.

Posted by: Michael Schidlowsky, Software Engineer

Today, I’m happy to announce that we’ve added 24 new themes to Google forms, which take advantage of the new Google Font API and images from iStockphoto. As a reminder, when you're editing a form, click the Theme button to find the right theme and apply it to your form.

I first got involved with themes at Google when I designed a few templates for the Google Page Creator launch in 2006. Since then, I’ve worked on a number of theme projects in my 20% time, as they presented a far different design challenge compared to my regular projects as a webmaster at Google. You can see my “Spring/Zen Branches” in a number of products.

When I learned about the Google Font API, I wanted to give it a test drive by creating some new Google forms themes. Forms seemed like a good place to start, since they have a pretty standard structure, which makes them fairly simple to style. Initially I was just playing around with different font combinations, but when we added in imagery from iStockPhoto, things really took off. For example it made sense to create a wedding theme using cake imagery and the script font Tangerine, or a digital theme using binary number imagery and the monospaced font Inconsolata. And what better way to present a stack of old books than a font like Crimson Text, which brings to mind classical serif fonts from print? I had a lot of fun combining imagery, colors and font styles to match each other, and I hope you have fun using these themes on your forms.

Posted by: Melissa Louie, Webmaster

If you’ve been holding off on trying our new editors or know a friend who has never tried Google Docs because they don’t have a Google Account, you can now take Google Docs for a test drive with the new Google Docs demo. This lightweight demo includes a sample document, spreadsheet and drawing and works even if you aren’t logged into a Google Account.

Instead of trying to explain to friends how real-time collaboration in Google Docs works, now you can show them. All you have to do is go to docs.google.com/demo, share the link over chat or email, and start typing. Real-time character by character co-editing in documents, cell presence in spreadsheets and instant updates in drawings are all seconds away.



Take it for a spin and let us know what you think in the comments.

Posted by: Peter Harbison, Product Marketing Manager

June is the month of graduations and new beginnings for millions of students around the world. The Google Docs team is also continually learning and we’re happy to announce that the new documents and spreadsheets editors have both graduated.

Documents
Beginning today and rolling out over the next couple of weeks, all new documents will be created using the new documents editor. Docs already created using the older editor will remain there. We will be sharing more information on how to move those documents to the new version soon.

The new editor was built for faster real-time collaboration, better imports, and more control over your document’s layout. Since the preview, we’ve added lots of features including a table of contents, a special characters dialog, a dictionary, search as-you-type, and re-sizable images. You can learn more about the new document editor here.

Spreadsheets
The new version of spreadsheets is available as the default to everyone starting today. Since the launch of the new spreadsheets, we’ve added a lot of new features, including formula highlighting, sheet dragging, sheet menu, faster scrolling, an editable formula bar, and autocomplete in cells, copy sheet from one spreadsheet to another and range sorting.

GoogleLookup and spreadsheet gadgets, which will be added to the new editor shortly, can still be used in the old version which can be accessed by clicking on the “Old version” link in the top right of any spreadsheet. The old version will be available for a few more weeks..

Thanks to everyone who has tried out the new editors over the last couple of months. Your feedback has been very valuable as we prepared to make it available to everyone. The new editors also let us develop new features more quickly, so let us know what you think on the forums.

Finally, there’s also good news for Google Apps customers: these new editors will become their default soon as well. We’ll begin activating the new editor for documents on June 21 and for spreadsheets on June 30. Watch the Google Enterprise Blog for more information.

Update: Thanks to everyone who has provided feedback on the new editors. While the new editors are the default for both documents and spreadsheets, based on your feedback we have modified the roll out of the new documents editor to give you the option to opt-out and stay on the older version. You can do this by unchecking the “Create new text documents using the latest version of the document editor” box on the Editing tab in Google Docs settings. We will update you again when we have gathered additional feedback and have new timing regarding the deprecation of the old editor.

Posted by: Jeff Harris, Product Manager

The ability to share my Google Docs is crucial to my productivity. My teammates and I often add comments to docs, collaboratively organize our feature-planning spreadsheet, and send links of interesting company presentations to each other. Like anyone, I want to make sure that I can share these materials with my colleagues easily and efficiently. This is why I’m happy to announce some improvements that make sharing your Docs easier while giving you even more control:

• Improved visibility options indicating how private or shareable a doc is: Google docs can now be identified as: private; anyone with a link; or public on the web.


• Private: Docs start out as private. When you first create a doc, you are the only person with access to it. From there, you can give access to other people.
• Anyone with the link: If you set your doc to “Anyone with the link,” it’s like an unlisted phone number. In the same way that anyone who knows an unlisted phone number can call it, anyone who knows the web address or URL of that doc can view it.
• Public on the web allows anyone the ability to find and access that particular doc on the web. For example, you could create a flyer for a concert, save it as a public doc, post a link to it on your blog. Public docs are automatically indexed by search engines like Google, so they may appear in search results as well.


• Access viewable at a glance: Visibility options for your docs now appear next to every doc title and in the docs list. You can easily see the full list of editors and viewers by clicking on the visibility option next to the doc’s title or on the Share button


• A cleaner, simpler interface: We’ve removed the three tab interface and replaced it with one dialog that lets you see who has access, manage access and invite others.


• Resettable doc URL: For a doc set to anyone with a link, you can reset the doc’s URL at anytime, which helps you better control who has access to your doc.


• Bulk changes in the docs list: You can now modify the sharing settings of multiple docs at a time by selecting multiple docs and selecting Share > Sharing settings.

To learn more about how these new visibility options work and for an overview of sharing in Google Docs, check out the videos below:





These changes are rolling out now and should be available to everyone in the next week. These improvements have really made a difference in my Google Docs experience. I can share much more quickly and always tell at a glance who has access to my docs. I hope you find them helpful too. Let us know what you think in the forums.

Posted by: Vikki Chou, Software Engineer

Cross posted on the Google Mobile Blog

Last week, we announced that the Google Docs viewer supports .doc and .docx attachments. Today we’re also releasing a mobile version of the Google Docs viewer for Android, iPhone and iPad to help you view PDFs, .ppt, .doc and .docx files you’ve uploaded to your documents list, without needing to download the file.



With our mobile viewer you can switch quickly between pages and pan/zoom within a page. On your iPhone and iPad, you can pinch to zoom in or out.

You can try it out by going to docs.google.com on your Android-powered device, iPad or iPhone and select any document in these formats that you've previously uploaded. Let us know what you think in the Mobile Help Forum.

Posted by: Mickey Kataria, Software Engineer

As anyone working on a term paper, project plan, or party invitation will tell you, there’s a lot of truth in the old saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” With the new Google Documents editor, you can easily find and insert the perfect image into a document and it will behave exactly as you’d like it.

To get started, select Image from the Insert menu. In Google documents, you can import images from your computer or from a URL. But sometimes you don’t have the image you want to use on hand. Whether it’s a map of the Roman Empire or a photo of a golden retriever, you can now insert an image directly from Google Image Search.


You can add any .gif, .jpg, .png, .bmp image file, up to 2 MB in size.

Wrapping it up
It can be important for images in your document to interact in certain ways with your text. Maybe you want your term paper’s sentences to wrap around a country’s flag? Or perhaps you want images to embellish the lines of your restaurant’s menu?

In the new version of documents, we’ve added a new setting for images -- Inline or Fixed. An Inline image will behave like text -- as you add or subtract words and lines, the image will move around the page, just as words within a certain paragraph do.


Meanwhile, a Fixed image will stay anchored to a specific paragraph, and your words will wrap around it.


You can drag and drop the image around your document if the Fixed position is selected. Or, for an Inline image, you can copy and paste it as you would move around the text within your document.

Resizing images
To resize an image within your document, you can click on it, and a resize box will appear. You can maintain the aspect ratio of the image by dragging from the corner of the rectangular resize window. If maintaining that ratio isn’t important, you can click one of the boxes on any side of the image and drag until you’ve resized the image to your liking.


These advanced image options are available only for documents created in the new version of Google Documents. Let us know what you think in our help forum.

Posted by: Michael Thomas, Software Engineer

Last year we published Getting Started Guides for spreadsheets, documents, and presentations -- because using a product for the first time can sometimes be challenging. People have found these very helpful, so we’ve created a Getting Started Guide for drawings.

This guide covers the basics about Google drawings and gives you all the information you need to start creating, editing, formatting, and sharing your drawings. It also includes some tips and tricks about features you may not know too much about. If you already use Google presentations, but aren't so familiar with drawings, you can read this guide to learn, for example, how to embed your drawing into a presentation.

Don't forget to share this link with your family, friends, and coworkers who may want to get started with Google drawings.

After you're finished reviewing the guide, check our Help Center for more information. And if you have questions or want to share your suggestions and comments, visit our product ideas page.

Posted by: Bryan Carroll, Consumer Operations Strategist

We'd like to let you know about a few new features we’ve recently added to drawings. Go create a drawing to check them out.

Center on page
While it’s possible to use alignment guides to center an object or group of objects on the page, now you can center an object on the page quickly using the context menu or Format menu.
Aspect-constrained canvas re-size
You’ll often want to just shrink or expand your working canvas size without changing the aspect ratio, which is 4 x 3 by default. So, now you can hold shift while you re-size the canvas to preserve its current aspect ratio.


Thumbnails for drawings in the doc list
When you search for drawings it’s really helpful to see the results. Now you can use the thumbnail view in your doc list to quickly preview all of the drawings in the results of your search.

Full text search for drawings
Some drawings may also contain text that you may want to search for. Now we let you search through all of the text in your drawings - within a text box, shape, or word art - so that when you search for that text from your private docs list, your drawing will show up in the results.


Pop-up keyboard shortcut help
We know there are a lot of tricky little keyboard modifiers you need to know about to use some of the most powerful features of drawings. Now these shortcuts be easily inspected at a glance by hitting Control / or Command / on a Mac which has the distinction of being the last keyboard shortcut you ever need to memorize. Kudos to the Gmail team for inspiring this design.


Let us know what you think in the forums.

Posted by: Chris Nokleberg, Software Engineer

In April the we launched the new Google drawings editor. I use Google drawings to enhance my Google presentations by building dynamic and informative images in drawings and copying them over to the presentation I’m making. Read on for some tips on how to use drawings to make a better presentation.

Expressing ideas using diagrams from the template gallery
Google recently launched the template gallery for drawings. When I need to express an idea with a diagram, this is a great first place to look. Diagrams can express relationships, organizations, processes, and other ideas that are difficult to show in words.

For more information on adding, searching for, and rating templates, check out our blog post on the template gallery.

Giving your text boxes some style
Sometimes when I need to get a point across, I find it’s easier to do when I surround it with color. With Google drawings, I encapsulate my thoughts in any number of shapes. Drawings lets me add text to pretty much any shape by double clicking on the shape.

After I type text into the box, I use the formatting palette to make the point stand out.

Enhancing images to highlight a point
Every so often I need to include a chart, screenshot, or image and highlight a specific point that I want to discuss. Using drawings, I add pointers and boxes to overlay a chart, screenshot, or image in order to draw the viewers eye to what I’d like to call out.

To do this I use the Insert > Image option and load whatever image I want to work with onto my canvas.
Then I use either the arrow line or a shape to highlight my point. To overlay shapes, I set the background color to transparent so that the image below is still visible.
Copying my drawing into a presentation
Once I’ve finished using drawings to create my visuals, I copy it onto a slide in my presentation. To do this, I go to the Web Clipboard in my drawing and select Copy entire drawing to web clipboard.

Once the drawing is in my web clipboard, I go to my presentation and select the slide that I want to drop my drawing into. Then, I click on the Web Clipboard icon and select the drawing from the list.

Once it’s on the slide I can re-size it to the best fit. I can even make edits to the drawing from within the presentation, by double clicking on the drawing and opening the embedded drawing editor.

Posted by: Bryan Carroll, Consumer Operations Strategist

Since the launch of Google Docs drawings, we’ve been excited to see you not only create really impressive and useful drawings, but also actively share them with the world. In order to make it easier for you to share your drawings, we’ve added drawings to the Google Docs template gallery. Sharing via the gallery gives you categories, ratings, and even usage counts for drawings you’ve submitted.

Here are a couple examples of drawing templates currently in the gallery:




Some other examples already available include a coin puzzle, a series of United States maps, a business model example, isometrics, a floor plan, and an interactive learning object.

Go check out the drawings in the gallery, and please submit your best drawings to the public, so that everyone can easily take advantage of your hard work. And, let us know if you’ve made something that will blow our minds, and you’d like us to feature your drawing here on the Google Docs blog.

Posted by: Bob Rose, Software Engineer

In a visual application like Google drawings, we know the details count, which is why we’re excited to announce another batch of features and shortcuts that will help you refine your drawings. Create a drawing to check them out.

Zoom improvements
We’ve added several new and simple ways to zoom in and out within a drawing: a zoom tool on the toolbar; the ability to draw a rectangle around an area to zoom; zoom levels to the View menu; and keyboard shortcuts to zoom in (Ctrl Shift → or Cmd Shift → on a Mac) and zoom out (Ctrl Shift ← or Cmd Shift ← on a Mac).


Pie and arc drawing improvements
Once you’ve selected the pie or arc shape, drag from the center point, then release to set the radius, move your mouse along the circumference to set the angle, then click when you’re done. Hint - you can hold shift during step 2 to constrain your arc to 15 degree increments.

You can also select Edit > Change Shape to toggle between a pie shape and arc shape.

Duplicate while rotating and resizing
You may already know that if you hold Control (or Command on a Mac) you can make a copy of an object as you drag it. Well, we have extended the Control/Command modifier to duplicate objects while you resize and rotate objects too, which makes it easy to make both concentric and radial diagrams.

Hint: duplicating while resizing works better if you resize from large to small, since each new object gets placed on top.


New line decoration controls
Now you can change the style of the cap used at the end of your lines from the default butt cap to use square caps or round caps (see below).

You can also change the appearance of line joins within your polylines and shapes from the default round join to use miter joins or bevel joins. These options are available via Format > Line decorations.

Let us know what you think in the forums.

Posted by: Chris Nokleberg, Software Engineer