Getting your ducks in a row with snap to grid

Today, we're launching snap to grid in Google Docs presentations. Snap to grid makes it easy to auto-align text, images, shapes, and tables within your slides. This option is on by default, so you may have already used it without noticing anything, apart from a mild sense of euphoria.

But, there's more than meets the eye with snap to grid. Try out these handy keyboard modifiers:

[ALT] while dragging turns off the grid and gives you smooth drag (use [OPTION] on a mac)
[SHIFT] while dragging enables vertical and horizontal dragging guides
[SHIFT] while moving an object with arrow keys enables 1 pixel nudge
[SHIFT] while resizing preserves the aspect ratio of the object
[CTRL] while moving leaves the original object and drops a duplicate in the new location



You can disable and re-enable snap to grid through the slide context menu or the arrange menu.

Please let us know what you think on the Google Docs user forum.

Posted by: Andy Perelson, Software Engineer

Read more

Making presentations better with tables and auto-play

The Google Docs team pays close attention to what users say on our forums, and we've heard one issue loud and clear: You want tables. Actually, we really wanted tables too. Well, we're pleased to announce that we now have tables in presentations, which can be useful for organizing data that matters to your audience.



Once you've inserted a table into your presentation, you can easily add, select, and resize rows and columns with a single click , format and align text across the table, and set background colors for your cells and borders. Your rows will grow to fit content as you type it. Collaborators can even make edits to the same table simultaneously. Now, when you import tables from Microsoft Office PowerPoint they'll show up as editable tables in Google Docs. Try the new table menu by choosing "Table" in the presentation editor, or you can learn more about the feature here.

We also get great ideas for features from our users. For example:



Thanks for telling us what you think and helping us make presentations better. Keep it up.

Posted by: Dave Santoro and Attila Bodis, Software Engineers

Read more

Creating and giving presentations has gotten easier

If you haven't created a presentation in Google Docs in a while, you should consider trying out these recent enhancements:

Multi-shape formatting allows you select multiple shapes and/or text boxes, and format them all at once. To select multiple objects, hold down the Shift key while you click each object, or drag over all of the objects that you'd like to select. You can then change the fill color, line color, border weight, font size, etc.

Manipulation of text boxes got easier in some more ways, too. Text boxes now grow in size as you type and you can now vertically align the text within multiple boxes using a new Text Vertical Alignment button in the toolbar:

When you are giving live presentations, you now can better navigate to specific slides within your presentation. Click the Start Presentation button to launch into presentation mode. Then look for a toolbar at the bottom of the window. At any time, you can immediately jump to a different slide.

We love feedback, so visit our Help Forum to share your feedback on these and other features.

Posted by: Jen Mazzon, Product Manager

Read more