New in Google Docs and Google Sites

Two big advantages of building web applications are frequent feature releases and easier cross-product sharing. Today we have a little of both for you. This week, we are adding version history to uploaded files in the documents list as well as drop downs in horizontal navigation and a new sharing experience to Google Sites.

Version history
Earlier this year, we added the ability to “Upload any file” to Google Docs so that you upload, store, and share any file up to 1 GB in size. Now you can upload new versions of the same file to your document list. Previously, each time you updated a file, you would have to upload the new version as a new file with a new URL, re-share it, and put in the correct folders again.

When you select the “Add or manage versions” option on any file, you can upload new versions of a file, download previous versions, and delete older versions.

Drop down menu in horizontal navs
Sometimes, you want to group information using drop downs and now you can by going More actions > Manage site > Site layout.

New sharing experience
Back in June, we made sharing easier in Google Docs. Today, we extended this simplified sharing experience to Google Sites, unifying the sharing experience across Google Docs and Google Sites. As with Google Docs, Google Sites now be set to one of three visibility options: private, anyone with the link, or public on the web.

The new visibility option is always available at a glance at the top of each site.

With this update, the new “Anyone with the link” setting makes your site available to anyone that knows the unique URL, but blocks search engines from indexing the site. And for those times that someone sends you a link to a site but you don’t have access, you can now request access to that site from the access denied page.

As always, we’d love your feedback and if you have any questions, please check out our document list and Google Sites help pages.

Posted by: Mike Procopio, Software Engineer

Read more

Convert files in the documents list to a Google Docs format

Today, we’re happy to announce that you can now convert files already uploaded to your documents list into a Google Docs format. Previously, this option was only available on upload.

This addition includes converting image and PDF files to text using our recently added Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. The full list of files that can be converted include:

• For spreadsheets: .xls, .xlsx, .ods, .csv, .tsv, .txt, .tsb
• For documents: .doc, .docx, .html, plain text (.txt), .rtf, .odt
• For presentations: .ppt, .pps
• For OCR: .jpg, .gif, .png, .pdf

To convert your file, right-click on it while in the document list and select Make a Google Docs copy. This option leaves your original file in place and adds a new Google Docs copy to your docs list.


Now you convert your old files and collaborate on them in cloud. We hope you enjoy it! Let us know if you have feedback or suggestions.

Posted by: Jim McMaster, Software Engineer

Read more

New Search Operators in your Documents List

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

Read more

A thumbnail is worth about one hundred words

Earlier today, we added a new view option to your Documents List: thumbnail view.

While the standard "list view" displays the item title and information like sharing state, the thumbnail view displays small previews of your files. We generate thumbnails for all Google Docs types and most common files (photos, PDFs, etc). You can toggle between the two using new buttons on the top right of the toolbar.

When combined with search by relevance, the thumbnail view makes it really easy to find the file you're looking for.

And for all us spelling-challenged and typo-prone folks, we added spelling correction in search. Never again will you need to wonder how your search for "agedna" (agenda) came up with zero results. :-)


Finally, 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.

Posted by: Vijay Bangaru, Product Manager, Google Docs

Read more

Upload and store your files in the cloud with Google Docs

We're happy to announce that over the next few weeks we will be rolling out the ability to upload, store and organize any type of file in Google Docs. With this change, you'll be able to upload and access your files from any computer -- all you need is an Internet connection.

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. This makes it easy to backup more of your key files online, from large graphics and raw photos to unedited home videos taken on your smartphone. You might even be able to replace the USB drive you reserved for those files that are too big to send over email.

Combined with shared folders, you can store, organize, and collaborate on files more easily using Google Docs. For example, if you are in a club or PTA working on large graphic files for posters or a newsletter, you can upload them to a shared folder for collaborators to view, download, and print.

You can also 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.

To learn how businesses can take advantage of this new functionality, check out the post on the Enterprise Blog.

As always, we’d love your feedback and if you have any questions, please check out our help page. This feature will be enabled for your account over the next couple of weeks — look for the bubble notification when you sign in to Google Docs.

Posted by: Vijay Bangaru, Product Manager, Google Docs

Read more

Sort by relevance, export all and more

Over the next few days, we will be enabling several new features in your Docs list.

Sort by relevance

The first is the addition of relevance ranking in your Docs list search results. Until now, anytime you searched for a document, the results were sorted by "last modified date".

Now, your search results will display the items most relevant to your search at the top of the list. We also added a new menu on the right side of the toolbar, which lets you decide whether you'd like to sort your Docs list by "Relevance," "Starred" or "Last Modified".

This improvement to search within Docs also includes automatic stemming and synonyms. So if you search for "check account", we'll also include results for a few variations of those words, including "checking account" (which is what you probably meant to type). Or if you search for "mac book", we'll also include results for "macbook".

Export all your files

There's also more good news from the Data Liberation Front. A few weeks ago we launched the new "Export..." functionality. Today, we added an "Export all" option, which lets you export all your docs (up to 2GB at a time) with one click. This is the equivalent of almost 100,000 Google Docs.


You can also export a single file and email it to anyone you'd like in a single step. Once you select an item, click "Share" and select "Email as attachment...". Then pick which format (PDF, MS Office, etc.) you want to use to send the item, compose your email, and hit send.


Sunsetting Email-In Your Documents and Files

Lastly, a change that we aren't excited about. We're removing the existing "email-in" feature. As you may know, it's been a bit buggy recently and only supports a small subset of document types compared to the Docs list. In order to address this, we'll be taking down the feature and working on a bringing it back in the future with more functionality and better integration.

In the meantime, you can use the multi-file upload in your Docs list or the GData API to programatically upload docs. You can also take attachments from GMail and open them in Google Docs.

If you have any questions, please let us know over on the forum.

Posted by: Vijay Bangaru, Product Manager, Google Docs

Read more

New additions to the settings page

Earlier today we made two additions to the Google Docs settings page. The first, "Where items open," lets you pick if you want items to open in a new window (how it works today) or in the same window.

A couple weeks ago, we launched "New!" and "Viewed/unviewed" indicators in the docs list which allow you to easily spot brand new and updated items. Since not everyone loves these -- shocking, I know :-) - we also added an "Update indicators" setting, which lets you turn these indicators off.

Posted by: Vijay Bangaru, Product Manager, Google Docs

Read more

Data Liberation, "Mark as viewed", and New!

A couple weeks ago, we launched a multi-file uploader to make it much easier for you to put files into the cloud. Today we're launching a new feature to make it much easier to get your content out.

That's right, it's our first major offensive on the Data Liberation Front: "Convert, Zip and Download."

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 we'll give you a nice zip file to download that has all your content.



For now, you can "export" up to 500 MB of content in a single zip file, which is over 20,000 typical files. Sometimes it takes us a few minutes to export really large amounts of files, so instead of making you wait, we added an "Email when ready" option. We'll send you a link when the zip file is ready.

We've made some other improvements to Docs as well. We've added indicators on whether you've "viewed" an item or not. "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.

We rounded out this feature with a "New!" indicator that is displayed when items are initially shared to you. So when an item is first shared to you, it will be bold ("Unviewed") and marked as "New!". Once you view this item, the item is listed normally. And, of course, when the item is updated by someone else, we mark it as "Unviewed" again.



Give the features a whirl and let us know what you think.

Posted by: Vijay Bangaru, Product Manager, Google Docs

Read more

Shared folders and more in Google Docs

Today, we are happy to announce the updates to the Google Docs docs list that we promised in July. We're rolling out these updates gradually, so they should be available to everyone soon. The biggest update is the introduction of shared folders -- far and away the most requested Google Docs feature. Shared folders work how you would expect them to and we hope they will make it easier for teams and groups to collaborate on documents together.

To share a group of items, all you have to do is put them all into a folder and share the folder. As you'd expect, if you add an item to a shared folder, it will automatically be shared and if you add someone to an existing shared folder, they will instantly get access to all of the folder's content.

We've also made it easy to upload multiple items to Google Docs. Instead of picking one file at a time, our new upload page lets you choose multiple files and upload them simultaneously, in just a couple of steps.

First click on "Select files to upload" and use "Shift" or "Ctrl" to pick multiple files. Then press "Start upload". We added progress bars so you'll be able to watch the upload as it progresses.

We've also brought back "Items not in folders" (under "More searches"), based on your feedback.

On the whole, "Items not in folders" works the same

• When you create an new item or an item is directly shared to you, it's in "Items not in folders".
• When an item is shared to you via a folder, it's not in "Items not in folders".
• When you add an item to a folder, it will no longer be in "Items not in folders".
• When you remove an item from all its folders, it will once again be in "Items not in folders".

Since many of you have been using this view as a workflow tool (perhaps you keep drafts and to-do's "not in folders" and then when they are done, move them to a folder), we've made one change to ensure the filter functions as expected in light of the new shared folders. If you share an item with me and I put it in a shared folder, it is still in your "Items not in folders" view. The reason is that I shouldn't be able to change your workflow. As a result, you'll occasionally see an item with a folder tag in your "Items not in folders" view. This is an item that someone else put in a shared folder, but you've never put in a folder.

And finally, we've also updated the look of the interface. For the most part, we changed colors, spacing and moved some buttons around, but we also improved the old "Move to" dialog. The new "Folders" dialog let's you completely control which folder or folders an item is in. And when you're in a folder, you also have the "Move to" dialog which lets you quickly move an item to a different folder.

Please try out the new features and let us know what you think.

Posted by: Vijay Bangaru, Product Manager, Google Docs

Read more

Pardon our Dust

We're always looking for ways to make it easier to find what you're looking for in Google Docs, which is why we're taking some time to do a bit of remodeling to the Docs list. Over the next few weeks you'll see a number of small changes, culminating in a brand new shiny interface.

One thing you'll probably notice in the next few days is that the "Shared with..." list in the left hand pane will go away. But don't worry, you can still use Search to do the same thing. Just click on "Search Options" and type the user's name into the "Shared with:" box. If this is a search you'll do over and over again, you can click "Save this search" so it will be easily accessible in "Saved Searches".

Another thing you'll see is the new Sharing Menu. We feel this is a big improvement over the old one; we've moved all the sharing functionality into this one dialog, so now you can completely manage sharing without having to leave the Docs list.

We also added a few search operators, so you can now search with:

• Exact phase matching, by using quotes: ["match this phrase exactly"]
• Or: ["tacos" OR "nachos"]
• Negation: [salsa -dancing]. This will include items with salsa recipes, but not items about dancing
• Who the doc is shared from or to: [from:bob@gmail.com] or [to:bob@gmail.com]
• Star or Hidden state: [is:starred] or [is:hidden]
  

You'll see these changes happen over the next few weeks. They will be followed shortly by the new interface and a number of pretty exciting features we have in the pipe.

In the meantime, please pardon our dust. :-)

Posted by: Vijay Bangaru, Product Manager, Google Docs

Read more