New this week in Docs: Drag and drop upload and compact controls

We just launched a pair of features that can save you time and give you more room to work: drag and drop upload and compact controls.

Drag and drop upload
A few weeks ago, we made it easier to add images to your documents using drag and drop. Today we’re extending that functionality to the file upload page, making it even easier to move your files into the cloud. Now if you’re using Chrome, Safari, or Firefox, you’ll be able to quickly drag files into the drop area and shoot them up to the cloud.

Compact controls
The document editor borrowed a feature from spreadsheets to save screen space. You can now hide the title bar above the editor by choosing View -> Compact controls or pressing Ctrl Shift F (Cmd Shift F on Macs).

Let us know what you think in the comments.

Posted by: Mike Procopio, Software Engineer

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Tips & Tricks: Creating new Google Docs from your mobile

Yesterday, we announced mobile editing on Google Docs, which we've now rolled out to all English-language users.

One of the new features that launched is creating new documents and spreadsheets on your phone. This is particularly useful to jot down quick notes on the run, whether it’s capturing that game-changing idea for your company while at the gym, or typing out your grocery list on the train ride home.

Head to docs.google.com from your mobile and tap the create new icon at the top of your mobile Docs List. From here, you can name the spreadsheet or document and get started editing immediately:

For now, we support certain mobile devices, though we're working hard to accommodate other platforms as well.

Creating a new doc is just one of several new features available on your mobile device, and we'd love to know how you're using your Docs on the go -- be sure to let us know in the comments.

Posted by: Bob Rose, Senior Software Engineer

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Editing your Google Docs on the go

Cross posted on the Official Google Blog, Google Enterprise Blog and the Google Mobile Blog

With Google Docs, we’re always trying to make you more productive—and part of that means making it possible for you to get things done from anywhere, at anytime. That’s why we’re excited that the new documents editor now supports editing on your mobile browser. We’re rolling this out over the next few days.

That means that...

• You can work on that important memo...while on the bus or train to work.
• If you’re behind on a group proposal, but really want to make it to the ball game tonight, your whole team can work on it from the bleacher seats.
• You can take minute-by-minute notes at a concert so you’ll always remember the setlist. And your friends can jealously follow in real-time at home.
• ...and the list goes on!

Take a look at this video to see mobile editing in action:



It’s easy to get started: visit docs.google.com in a browser on a supported device, and select the document you want to edit. Then, when you’re viewing it, press the Edit button to switch to the mobile editor.

In the next few days, we’re rolling this out to English-language users around the world on Android with Froyo (version 2.2) and on iOS devices (version 3.0+) including the iPad. We’ll be adding support for other languages soon. And as before, we also support editing of spreadsheets from your mobile device’s browser.

We hope you enjoy editing your documents on the go—especially when you’re at the game with a hot dog in your other hand.

Posted by: Andrew Grieve, Software Engineer

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Faster typing, fewer mistakes

With Google Docs we try to make writing a document as easy and as fast as possible. Yesterday, we added two new auto-correction features to speed up your document writing.

LaTeX shortcuts in equations
Until now, the only way to enter an equation in documents was to create the equation from the Insert menu, and then use the equation toolbar to choose your symbols.

The toolbar makes it easy to discover which types of equations are possible.

Today we’re making it a little easier for users to quickly type equations using LaTeX equation shortcuts. For anyone who heard of LaTeX before, it’s a document markup language that’s often used by academics to quickly type out complex formulas. In Google Docs, when you’re inside an equation you can type '\sqrt' followed by a space or a parenthesis to automatically convert the text into a square root sign √. Other examples of useful shortcuts are '\frac' for a fraction and shorthands like '\epsilon' for Greek symbols.

If you want to quickly enter a superscript or a subscript while inside an equation, you can do that with '^' and '_'respectively. Here’s a full list of the automatic equation shortcuts supported in Google Docs.

Text replacements
We also added the ability to substitute text automatically. For example, you can type '(c)' followed by a space to have it automatically converted into a copyright sign ©, or '2/3' and a space to have it automatically converted into the fraction symbol: ⅔.

This feature is especially useful if there are spelling mistakes that you notice yourself making over and over again. You can right click on a misspelled word, go down to the AutoCorrect option, and choose a way of automatically fixing this spelling mistake in the future.

If you don’t want text replacements, you can disable them from the Tools > Preferences dialog. From that dialog, you’ll also be able to manage your text replacements by adding and removing items from the list.

Finally, if a document ever makes an auto-correction that you don’t want, you can press Ctrl Z (Cmd Z on a Mac) to undo it.

We hope that these new features will help make you a speedier writer in Google Docs.

Posted by: Evgeniy Stepanov, Software Engineer

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New this week in Docs: auto-corrections, LaTeX in equations and images in cells

If you’re looking for more ways to speed up your typing or have been craving images in your spreadsheets, we have something for you this week. Auto-corrections and LaTeX shortcuts to equations speed up typing and reduce editing while images to cells make it easy to add color to your spreadsheets. These features are rolling out over the next couple of days.

We’ll be blogging about each feature in detail, but in the meantime here’s the quick digest version:

Auto-corrections
We’ve added a feature to substitute text automatically. For example, you can type '(c)' followed by a space to have it automatically converted into a copyright sign ©. You can also create your own custom auto-corrects.

LaTex in equations
If you’re familiar with LaTex, you’ll enjoy the many LaTeX shortcuts we added to the equation editor. For example, while editing an equation you can type '\frac' followed by a space and it will automatically be converted into an equation fraction.

Add images to cells
You can now add images to individual spreadsheet cells and choose from a variety of sizing options including size to fit, stretch, original size, and custom.

We’ve also got another feature ready to go for tomorrow so stay tuned.

Posted by: Lindsay Hall, Software Engineering Intern

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Tips & Tricks: Our favorite shade of beige, the ruler

Recently, we launched a rebuilt document editor from the ground up. Just like some colors stand out more than others, there are some features in the new editor that are particularly shiny. While features like real-time collaboration, more fonts, and an advanced revision history tool are like neon green, crimson red, and ultramarine, the ruler tends to be viewed more like a beige.

But the ruler, like beige, can certainly have its charms. You can use the ruler to position your text anywhere on the page. And that makes it a powerful tool.

There are a number of blue shapes on the ruler -- these affect the positioning of each paragraph, and are either indents or tab stops.


All paragraphs have three indents: the first line indent,the left indent, and the right indent.

Dragging the first line indent adjusts the left padding of the first line of a paragraph, while the left indent adjusts all subsequent lines of a paragraph. If you drag the left indent along the ruler, the first line indent will follow it. The right indent adjusts how far a paragraph extends toward the right side of the page.

Tab stops

Sometimes you need to control the display of your text with more granularity than what you can accomplish with just indents. That’s where tab stops come in handy.


With tab stops, you can align text relative to a specific spot on the ruler. So that means that a left tab stop will left align text to a position on the ruler, a right tab stop will right align text to a spot on the ruler, while a center tab stop will center-align the text.

To move between tab stops, you can press the tab key, and subsequent text will align with the tab stop. You can add multiple tab stops by clicking on a spot on the ruler and selecting the appropriate tab stop.

You can move the position of a tab stop by dragging it around the ruler. And to remove a tab stop, simply drag it off the ruler.

Margins

Tab stops and indents are great for adjusting individual paragraphs, but sometimes you want to change alignment for an entire document. For that, you can use margins.

You can adjust the left and right margins by dragging the gray space on either side of the ruler.

You can also adjust the left and right margins, as well as the top and bottom margins of your document from File -> Page setup.

Once you get going, like with beige, it’s a bit surprising all of the things you can do with the trusty ruler.

Posted by: Luiz Pereira, Software Engineer

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Writing a campaign speech with Google Docs

A few months ago, my colleague Julia and I were at a technology conference for educators. Teachers were very enthusiastic when we demonstrated working together on documents at the same time and were really excited about how they could use it in their classrooms. What surprised us though, was how many of our favorite features - like working together at the same time - were brand new to them.

We knew we wanted to share that same excitement with even more people. Inspired by the Search Stories videos, we set off to tell a story using Google Docs. The result is this video:



We hope you enjoy seeing some of the cool features Google Docs offers in action. And if you think your friends would like it, show it to them too!

Posted by: Bryan Carroll, Consumer Operations Strategist, Google Docs

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Guest post: Writing a book using Google Docs

Guest post: November is National Writing Month and to celebrate, we’ve invited Dr. Steven Daviss to talk about how he used Google Docs to write a book with two colleagues. Dr. Daviss is currently the Chairman of Psychiatry at Baltimore Washington Medical Center in Maryland and has been increasingly leveraging his clinical and administrative experience towards a career merging health care policy, informatics, and health care reform.


Two other psychiatrists (Anne Hanson and Dinah Miller) and I have been writing a popular blog (Shrink Rap) about the practice of psychiatry since 2006. A year later, we started a podcast (My Three Shrinks) that has received great reviews in iTunes. Late in 2007, we decided to take some of those posts and weave them together to write a book.

We started out using a desktop word processor to write the book, each chapter being a separate document. We learned about the limitations of making edits and sending out each of our revisions to the other two: we very quickly had multiple out-of-sync versions and the whole thing was a mess. This is from one of Dinah’s emails back then: “With 3 people doing this, I need to be able to keep track of what everyone wants to write. As I revise it, I'll change the file to reflect the date, but remember that if you and steve are sending me changes and edits simultaneously, I may not see them or it may get very confusing. Your color is red.”

After several weeks of this, we were all seeing red, which was causing a lot of unnecessary tension.

I had used Google Docs collaboratively before to write a couple articles and a few grant proposals, but wasn’t sure if we could successfully use it to write an entire 250-plus page book. But I knew it had to be better than what we were doing.

Once we switched to Google Docs, writing the book together became a much more fluid process because we were able to focus on the writing and not on the complications of getting the technology to keep up with us. We imported the first couple chapters and proceeded from there, making each chapter a separate document shared by the three of us and (eventually) our editor. We could write our own chapters privately until they were ready to show our co-authors, then sharing was as simple as clicking a couple buttons. Whenever we changed our minds about what to take out, we were able to restore sections from previously saved versions. We didn’t have to think about which version of word processing software someone was using, or if the documents would lose formatting between Mac and Windows. And, I could see when my co-authors were also working on the book, so I knew when to call and talk about the project.

Eighteen months after getting the book contract, we had a completed manuscript ready for copy editing.

Google Docs also helped to save our relationship. Initially, despite being good friends, the three of us had many conflicts about the technology and about the way we wanted to write (e.g., grammar, tense, tone, characters). When we were using emailed versions of documents, our arguments increased. After switching to Google Docs, we went back to our usual level of bickering ;-).

The book is being typeset now by Johns Hopkins University Press and will be out in May of 2011. And we have Google Docs to thank.

Posted by: Steve Daviss MD

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Drag and drop images in documents

When writing a document, it often helps to augment text with images and diagrams. Google documents already has three ways to add images: you can choose them from your hard-drive, add them by URL, and you can find them using Google Image Search.

But sometimes the exact image you need is on your desktop and you just want to add it to your document quickly. Starting today, you can drag images from your desktop directly into your documents.

For now, you can use image drag and drop with the latest versions of Google Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. We’ll enable it on other browsers as soon as they support the feature.

Posted by: Philipp Weis, Software Engineering Intern

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Online Office Hours with Google Docs

Cross-posted on the Google Student Blog

Guest Post: Alex is a senior at Harvard University, and interned this summer on Google's marketing team. Here he shares how he uses Docs to save time (and body heat) braving the cold Eastern winters

Now that the dorm move-in dust has settled and you have your class schedules all figured out, I wanted to share one of my favorite ways to use Google Docs that might help you stay on top of your work, save some time and maybe even stay a little warmer this school year!

I use the real-time collaboration in Google Docs to hold online office hours with my professors and TAs (teaching assistants). This allows me to collaborate, edit and revise my papers and reports in real-time no matter where my TAs or professors are on campus.

The air is already getting pretty crisp here in Boston and – if your school is in a similarly cold climate – you know exactly how nice it can be to avoid that icy trek across campus to office hours during the winter months. Here is how I use real-time collaboration in Google Docs to hold online office hours with my TAs so that I can review, revise and edit my assignments from the comfort and warmth of my own dorm room:

Set up some time to ‘meet’ with your professor or TA (hint: it's easy to do using Google Calendar). Sign into Google Docs at docs.google.com to get started.

Once in Google Docs, click the 'Share' button in the upper right hand corner. Enter your professor or TA’s email address in the ‘Add people’ field and click ‘Share’.

Your professor or TA will receive a link to the doc and a notification telling them that you have shared your doc with them. When they open the doc you will notice that their user name will appear in the top right corner of the screen. You are now collaborating in Google Docs.

Your professor or TA can now help you revise your doc in real time. Clicking the blue box in the upper right hand corner of the screen will allow you to chat with them and ask questions as you move through the doc. Your editor can also add comments to your doc without actually rewriting the text. Highlighting a passage and then selecting 'Insert > Comment' will allow them to make a note about that section to the right of the page.


Your professor or TA’s cursor will be visible as they move through the doc to show where there are currently reviewing or editing. Their cursor will appear in the color corresponding to the box next to their display name in the chat box. When they highlight a passage you will also be able to see their highlighted section in their color. As more people are invited to collaborate on the doc they will have different colors assigned to them so that you can tell who made each comment or revision.

Holding online office hours with Google Docs is just one of the ways to use Google to simplify your life as a student.

Posted by: Alex Roux, Harvard University

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