Google Spreadsheets added spell checking, but it doesn't find misspellings automatically, like in Google's word processor. You need to click on the Tools menu and select Check spelling. Google starts to find mistakes and suggests corrections from the dictionary. Unfortunately, you can't add words to the dictionary yet and Google's suggestions are sometimes terrible.
"The tool will go through all the cells on your sheet, highlighting each cell which has a misspelled word in red. Words that might be misspelled in each cell are underlined in red and can be changed by clicking on them and selecting the right spelling," explains Google Docs blog.
Google should replace the dictionary-based spell checker with the context-sensitive spell checker that's already used in Google Wave and Google Search. Instead of using a dictionary, this spell checker extracts data from web pages and Google searches to find a statistical language model, much like Google Translate. This model allows Google to predict mistakes and to determine the most likely corrections.
Google added some features that make the service more useful on a touchscreen device: pinch to zoom (only for iPhone and iPad), buttons for zoom and pagination.
Unfortunately for Google, iPhone's built-in PDF reader and Microsoft Office viewer are much better than Google Docs Viewer because they don't convert documents to images. Some Android phones include a document viewer based on Quickoffice, which also does a better job than Google Docs Viewer. There's also Adobe Reader for Android, probably the best Android PDF reader you can download for free.
Here's how to try Google Drawings and the new interfaces of Google Documents and Google Spreadsheets:
* create a new drawing by opening the documents list, clicking on "Create new" and selecting "Drawing".
* to see the new document editor, go to the settings page, click on the "Editing" tab and select "Create new text documents using the latest version of the document editor." Unfortunately, you can't see the existing documents in the new interface. The new document editor is code-named "kix" and it's a completely new application.
* to switch to the new spreadsheets editor, open a spreadsheet and click on "New version" at the top of the page. All spreadsheets will now open in the new interface.
The new interface is not yet available for presentations.
Google Docs has been constantly updated since 2006, Writely and Google Spreadsheets have merged, but adding new features became increasingly difficult. Now that browsers are much better than they were four years ago and cutting-edge apps like Google Wave can run in a browser, it was time for a new beginning.
"We decided to rebuild the underlying infrastructure of Docs to give us greater flexibility, improved performance and a better platform for developing new features quickly. Today, we're pleased to announce preview versions of the new Google document and spreadsheet editors and a new standalone drawings editor, all built with an even greater focus on speed and collaboration," says Jonathan Rochelle.
The new versions of the Google Docs will be rolled out in the coming days and you'll be able to try them when you see a message at the top of the page: "New version".
Besides using a new infrastructure, the document editor and the spreadsheet editor will add many new features. The document editor has real-time editing, sidebar chat, a new commenting system, better formatting and an improved importing feature. The spreadsheet editor brings back auto-complete, adds a formula bar for editing cells and you can now drag and drop columns.
There's also an application for creating drawing collaboratively: Google Drawings. "The new standalone drawings editor lets you collaborate in real time on flow charts, designs, diagrams and other fun or business graphics. Copy these drawings into documents, spreadsheets and presentations using the web clipboard, or share and publish drawings just like other Google Docs."
Google Enterprise Blog says that the offline mode will be transitioned from Google Gears to the native HTML5 implementation. "The new Google Docs editors will take advantage of faster rendering engines in modern browsers as well as new web standards like HTML5. As a result, we need to temporarily remove offline support for Docs starting May 3rd, 2010. We know that this is an important feature for some of you, and we are working hard to bring a new and improved HTML5-based offline option back to Google Docs."
Google Docs really needed a major update, especially now when Microsoft Office's web apps are about to be launched.
Even though Google Docs lets you upload any file up to 1024 MB, the service still has a lot to improve when it comes to previewing your files. Try to upload a video and you'll notice that Google Docs doesn't transcode the video and you can't watch it online.
The good news is that Google is working to fix this problem. MP3 files already show song titles and album art, but you still can't play them.
Trey D., who sent this tip, found some other interesting details:
When I upload music files (.mp3) to my Google Doc's account, regardless of the filename, the Song Title (per ID3 tag) is what comes up on the list of uploaded documents.
For example, I have uploaded a song 'Beach Boys-Good Vibrations.mp3'. The title that comes up on Google Docs, once the file has been uploaded is "Good Vibrations".
This is a change from earlier behavior that listed the filename (rather than the track name) and is a bit of a nuisance when I am searching for artist names (there is no trace of the artist name remaining).
Despite it being a little annoyance, I am hoping that Google is developing a music storage service a la Grooveshark.
If you wanted to use macros in Google Spreadsheets, there's a good news: Google Apps Script is now available for all Google Docs users. That means you can write scripts for performing repetitive actions, creating custom functions or even adding advanced features to Google Spreadsheets.
You can try one of the featured scripts by opening a spreadsheet, clicking on the "Insert" menu and selecting "Script". Unfortunately, Google's sample scripts aren't very useful: you can play Hangman, draw a fractal, convert a named range to a CSV file or translate the text from a cell into 10 other languages.
After installing a script, you need to reload the spreadsheet to be able to use it. Then you have to find the UI element that triggers the script: usually it's a new menu. Clicking on the menu entry doesn't run the script: you first need to authorize the script and then you have to click on the menu entry one more time. It's not user friendly.
To write your own scripts, read these tutorials. You'll have to type some JavaScript code, so you should be familiar with this scripting language.
Another week day, another Google acquisition. This time, Google bought DocVerse, a company founded by two former Microsoft employees which built a plug-in for Microsoft Office that lets you collaborate with other people in real-time.
"DocVerse combines the benefits of web-based collaboration tools like Google Docs and Zoho with the power and familiarity of the world's most popular productivity application, Microsoft Office. DocVerse offers the first ever product to truly enable real-time sharing and editing of Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel files. Its key advantage is that it does not require you to learn a new way to work by seamlessly plugging into Microsoft Office."
DocVerse doesn't use Google Docs as a back-end for real-time collaboration, but Google will probably integrate with Google Docs.
Google says that many people "are still accustomed to desktop software", so the acquisition will help these users to try cloud computing services while still using their favorite software.
DocVerse's blog offers an interesting perspective of a two former Microsoft employees: "We fundamentally believe that Google is one of the best positioned companies to truly disrupt the world of productivity software. We're looking forward to the opportunity to scale our vision at Google. Our first step will be to combine DocVerse with Google Apps to create a bridge between Microsoft Office and Google Apps."
Google says that you can no longer create a new DocVerse account, but there's a simple way to try the Microsoft Office plug-in. Download the setup and create a new account when DocVerse asks you to log in.
Bogdan, a reader of this blog, spotted a new Google Docs feature: server clipboard. It seems to be an implementation of Google Cloudboard, an online clipboard that should help you copy content between Google services like Gmail, Google Calendar or Google Docs. Cloudboard should make it easy to copy a spreadsheet in a Google Docs document or copy a Google Calendar event in a Gmail message.
I couldn’t find this feature in Google Docs, so it’s probably a test. Hopefully, the new clipboard will work well in all browsers without having to change advanced settings. Right now, if you click on Edit/Copy in Firefox, Google Docs shows this message: “Your browser does not allow access to your computer’s clipboard. Instead, please use Ctrl-C for Copy, Ctrl-X for Cut and Ctrl-V for Paste, or use Edit menu above the browser toolbar”.
“There are a few specific cases in which the best way to copy and paste is using the server clipboard menu. When you copy a selection using this menu, the content you copy is stored and associated with your Google Account. That means you can copy more than one selection and then choose which one to paste later; it also means you can copy something on one computer and then paste it on another.”
The article mentions that you might see “different formats that you can choose from to paste what you’ve copied (for example, HTML or plain text)”.
It’s also interesting to see that Google stores all the content you copy to the server clipboard for 30 days.
“Content you copy to the server clipboard is stored on Google’s servers and remains there until 30 days have passed since you last took action on (for example, copied) a given content selection. Even if a document is deleted, anything you copied from that document to the server clipboard will still exist on Google’s servers for that 30-day period. You can delete all items stored on the server clipboard by clicking the drop-down menu and selecting Clear all items.”
Now that you can use Google Docs to store files, you'll upload a lot of files from your computer and treat Google Docs as an online version of Windows Explorer (or any other file manager). Unlike Windows Explorer, Google Docs had a single view for displaying files: the details view.
If you don't like to see the date when a file was last modified or the number of collaborators, you can switch to the new thumbnail view. Google Docs generates thumbnails for documents, spreadsheets, presentations, photos and PDF files, while showing standard icons for other file types.
"We recently finished rolling out the upload and store any file feature, so everyone should now be able to upload, store, and share any file in Google Docs. We also increased the maximum file size based on your feedback, so you can now uploads files up to 1 GB in size," mentions Google Docs Blog.
Of course, there are many other improvements that would make Google Docs more useful: increasing the free quota to at least 10 GB, adding support for any file type to the API and making it easier to access your files by mapping Google Docs as a network drive.
Tip: you can use the new grid view for shared folders by adding &layout=grid to the URL. Here's an example.
After many years of waiting, Google's online storage service will finally be available. It won't be called GDrive, as it will only be an updated version of Google Docs.
"Instead of emailing files to yourself, which is particularly difficult with large files, you can upload to Google Docs any file up to 250 MB. You'll have 1 GB of free storage for files you don't convert into one of the Google Docs formats (i.e. Google documents, spreadsheets, and presentations), and if you need more space, you can buy additional storage for $0.25 per GB per year," mentions Google Docs blog.
The update will be slowly rolled out in the coming days and it's the next step in the evolution of Google's online office suite. When Google added support for PDF files in 2008, it became clear that Google Docs will let you upload any kind of file.
Google says that the service will be able to open many common file formats. "You can search for document files you've uploaded or that have been shared with you just like you do with your Google documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and PDFs. And you'll be able to view many common document file types with the Google Docs viewer."
Google Docs has the potential to become a great service for online storage, but it won't succeed if it only includes 1 GB of free storage. Microsoft's SkyDrive offers 25 GB of free storage, while ADrive offers 50 GB of free storage. Even Gmail has more free storage than Google Docs and its main purpose is not storing files.
