Google Drive Blog
The latest news and updates from the Google Drive team.
Use new Google spreadsheets charts in your documents and drawings
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Today, we’re releasing a few new types of charts, plus a feature that allows you to copy your charts from spreadsheets into documents and drawings. Sound good? Bet your bar chart it does. Let’s show you how it works.
Start by
creating a chart
. Then, select the chart by clicking on it once, which will display the chart’s name. Click the chart name or the arrow next to it to open the dropdown menu of chart actions. From the menu, select
Copy chart
.
Next, open the document or drawing where you’d like to insert the chart and position the cursor where you’d like the chart to go. Use the Web Clipboard dropdown menu, as shown below, to locate your copied chart.
As you hover the mouse over the menu item for the chart, a thumbnail will be displayed. Clicking on the chart item will paste it into the document as an image, which can then be resized, aligned, etc. Here’s an example of a chart pasted into a document:
Note that the chart snapshots are just that -- they are images of the chart at the time of copying and therefore do not update as the spreadsheet data changes. If you need to update a chart, just copy and paste it again.
The name of the chart shown in the Web Clipboard menu is the same as the chart’s name in the spreadsheet, which you can easily change from the default name, “Chart 1.” To rename a chart, select
Edit chart
from the chart’s action menu, and enter a new name on the
Customize
tab. This is particularly handy when working with charts from multiple spreadsheets.
We’ve also introduced a few new types of charts to Google spreadsheets. We now support
candlestick charts
and
combo charts
(which allow you to show columns, lines, and area lines all on the same graph). You can also use the
GeoMap chart
to insert a data-driven map of the world, a continent, or a country into your spreadsheet. Our
TreeMap chart
, meanwhile, should be exciting for the statisticians and logicians among you.
We hope this makes creating great documents easy as pie (charts, of course).
Posted by: Ben Margolin, Software Engineer
This week in Docs: Copying drawings and better right-to-left table support
Monday, August 1, 2011
This week in Docs, we have a couple of new features that we hope make your life easier (and more visual). Read on.
Copying and pasting drawings across docs
Starting today, we’re adding support for the
web clipboard
to the embedded drawing editor so that you can work with drawings within documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. This means that you can now copy shapes from one document and paste them into existing drawings in another doc. You can also use the web clipboard to move a drawing from a document into the standalone drawing editor.
To try this out, open a new document and go to
Insert > Drawing
to create a drawing in the embedded drawing editor. Click the web clipboard icon and
Copy shapes to web clipboard
.
Open another doc that you want to paste the drawing into. Click the web clipboard icon and hover to preview the available items -- then, click to paste when you’ve located the drawing you’d like to use.
Better support for right-to-left tables
We’ve also made an improvement to tables that will be useful for Hebrew and Arabic users. If you’ve enabled right-to-left controls from your
docs list settings
, you’ll now have an option to create tables that are visually right-to-left. This means that the first cell in the table will be in the upper right and that tabbing through the table will move you to the left and down. You can modify a table’s directionality from the table properties dialog.
We hope you enjoy these new features. As always, let us know what you think in the forums and stay tuned for more updates in the next
This week in Docs
blog post.
Posted by: Aharon Lanin, Software Engineer
This week in Docs and Sites: A spreadsheets shortcuts menu, PPTX support and more
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
This week, we’re introducing a number of enhancements to Google Docs and Sites: a spreadsheets shortcuts menu, support for PPTX conversion, a new RSS gadget, and improved mobile rendering for Sites.
Spreadsheets shortcuts
Although shortcuts have long been available in your Google spreadsheets, we've added a shortcuts menu to spreadsheets to make them easier to find -- saving you even more time. Hit
Ctrl
+
/
(or
Cmd
+
/
on a Mac) to pull up the list of shortcuts and learn new ways to sharpen your spreadsheet skills. Remember that shortcuts can vary depend on the operating system and browser you're using -- the example below is the menu you’d see if you were using a Chrome browser on a Mac.
Support for conversion of PPTX files to Google presentations
Starting today, you can convert PPTX files to Google presentations by either uploading the file from your desktop or converting the file from your documents list. Just follow the same
simple steps
as you normally would when converting files to Google Docs formats.
Better customization for your RSS Gadget in Sites
We’ve also added a new RSS gadget for Google Sites to our “Featured” gallery.
The new RSS gadget gives you complete control over the appearance of the gadget: You can customize any aspect of the feed, including font, color, size, number of items to display, and post length.
To set your gadget, go to
Insert > More Gadgets > Featured
, and look for
RSS Feed
.
Improved mobile rendering
After we released our
initial
version of Google Sites automatic mobile rendering, you enabled the option for over 50,000 sites, making it clear that you’re looking for a better way to easily publish content for mobile devices.
Based on what you’ve told us, we’re adding the additional behaviors to make automatic mobile rendering on Google Sites even better, including:
Images and header logos automatically scale in mobile mode
Gadgets and text boxes have widths that fit mobile devices
Pages with multi-column layouts stack columns vertically on mobile
Before
After
Thanks for continuing to let us know what you think about our products -- these changes wouldn’t be possible without you.
Posted by: Rajiv Bammi, Software Engineer
ZIP and RAR support now available in the Google Docs Viewer
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Downloading files that you only need to preview can create unnecessary clutter on your computer. While you can already use the Google Docs Viewer to view over
15 different file types
without downloading them, today we’ve added support for archive file types ZIP and RAR. Now, if someone sends you a ZIP or RAR file in Gmail, you’ll be able to view its contents from within your browser by clicking on
View
.
This will bring up a view that includes all of the files in the archive, the file types, and the size of those files.
When you hover over the list you can activate a menu by clicking
Actions
. You’ll be able to
View
items supported by Google Docs Viewer and
Print (PDF)
those that we offer PDF support.
Save to Google Docs
and
Download
appear for all files.
ZIP and RAR archives that are embedded inside other archives also work. For example, if you have a RAR file inside a ZIP file (like in our example above) you can just click on that file to access the embedded archive.
Go ahead and try the feature by
viewing a ZIP file
.
This feature extends to Google Docs for mobile, too. For each viewable file (including embedded ZIP or RAR archives) there is a link to view.
We hope this removes the need to download full archives when you only need to work on select items. We’re always adding more file types to the Google Docs Viewer -- let us know what file types you’d like to see support for next in the
forums
.
Posted by: Avner Aviad, Google Docs Viewer team
The Google Docs Help Center gets a makeover
Thursday, July 14, 2011
As Google Docs has developed over the last five years, the
Google Docs Help Center
has also grown to help you learn how to use hundreds of Google Docs features. With new features and articles being added regularly, however, the help center became hard to navigate, making it difficult to find useful help articles. Today, we’re happy to announce an entirely new help center structure that we’ve worked on for the last few months.
The Google Docs Help Center used to be divided by each individual Google Docs editor. But we've since found that presenting help articles by your intent is more helpful. We hope that this will cut down the time it takes you to find the article you're looking for, make it much easier to find that content, and help you learn about the power of Google Docs.
Here’s a look at the new categories you’ll find on the help center homepage:
Get started
: Information about documents, spreadsheets, and more for new Google Docs users.
Work in Google Docs
: Home to all help articles on editing and formatting, including content about Google documents and spreadsheets.
Manage, upload, and export
: All help articles that were previously categorized as "Documents List." Here, you'll find information about file management, uploading and exporting, and Google Cloud Connect.
Share, publish, and embed
: Information about sharing and publishing all in one place, since sharing is exactly the same no matter which type of doc you're working in.
Accounts, abuse, and privacy
: Home to help articles about your Google Account, Google Docs settings, reporting abuse, and privacy policies.
Mobile
: All help articles that relate to working in Google Docs on a mobile device.
Template gallery
: Information about how to navigate the template gallery, use and submit templates, and report inappropriate templates.
Fix a problem
: Houses information about known issues and how to solve a problem.
In the coming weeks, look out for more design and layout changes that will make your help center experience even better. Combined with the new help center organization, we hope that these ongoing design changes will make your learning experience in the help center more enjoyable, efficient, and useful.
Posted by: Julia Harter, Content and User Education Specialist
Our response to your Product Ideas
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Recently we opened our
Product Ideas page
to gather your feedback about what you’d like to see next in Google Docs. Over a two-week period, nearly 4,000 of you participated, submitting close to 2,000 ideas and casting over 50,000 votes.
Our
request for feedback
was designed to help us better prioritize the features you want most in Google Docs. We'll be sure to let you know as we roll out new features based on your valuable input. Here are just a few of the top ideas that we’re prioritizing:
Add better header and footer functionality
Make Google Docs available offline
Create vertical merge in spreadsheets
There were many other great ideas - from making Google Docs available as attachments in Gmail to allowing the use of Google Fonts across all Google Docs tools. While we can’t get started on these requests just yet, we’ll be sure to keep them in mind for future improvements.
Thanks to all who participated in our Product Ideas page! We enjoyed reading your product suggestions and look forward to sharing our progress as we move forward with the your ideas.
Posted by:
Posted by: Teresa Wu, Community Manager
Hats off to the winners of the inaugural Google Science Fair
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Cross-posted on the
Official Google Blog
Yesterday, our top 15 Google Science Fair finalists descended on Google’s headquarters and wowed our luminary judges—as well as more than 1,000 local attendees plus Googlers who stopped by to check out the action. Our exhibit hall was buzzing with energy and excitement as everyone wondered which young scientists would go home with our top prizes.
The results are in—and this year was all about girl power. Our top three winners by age category are:
Lauren Hodge in the 13-14 age group. Lauren studied the effect of different marinades on the level of potentially harmful carcinogens in grilled chicken.
Naomi Shah in the 15-16 age group. Naomi endeavored to prove that making changes to indoor environments that improve indoor air quality can reduce people’s reliance on asthma medications.
Shree Bose in the 17-18 age group. Shree discovered a way to improve ovarian cancer treatment for patients when they have built up a resistance to certain chemotherapy drugs.
Winners (from left to right): Lauren Hodge, Shree Bose, Naomi Shah
We also awarded one Grand Prize and the Grand Prize Winner is...Shree Bose; congratulations!
Our judges said the unifying elements of all three young women were their intellectual curiosity, their tenaciousness and their ambition to use science to find solutions to big problems. They examined complex problems and found both simple solutions that can be implemented by the general public—like changing your cooking habits or removing toxins from your home—as well as more complex solutions that can be addressed in labs by doctors and researchers, such as Shree’s groundbreaking discovery, which could have wider implications for cancer research.
The winners took home prizes furnished by Google and our partners CERN, LEGO and National Geographic. Shree received a $50,000 scholarship, a trip to the Galápagos Islands with a National Geographic Explorer and aninternship at CERN. Naomi and Lauren each received $25,000 scholarships and internships at Google and LEGO. All three were awarded lifetime digital subscriptions to Scientific American. Beyond the grand prizes, everyone went home with some pretty cool loot, along with plenty of photos and memories that we hope will last a lifetime. If you’d like to watch last night’s events, including a speech from our chairman, Eric Schmidt, and presentations from judges
Dean Kamen
and
Tierney Thys
, you can find video on our
YouTube channel
.
On behalf of Google, our partners and science lovers everywhere, we’d like to thank all of our finalists and everyone who submitted a project to the inaugural Google Science Fair. We are humbled by your ingenuity, your dedication and your skill. We are heartened to know that our future is in the capable hands of our young scientists—young men and women who tackle big ideas to bring significant, actionable change to the world.
If you’d like information about next year’s Google Science Fair,
let us know
and we’ll be in touch soon, or keep an eye on the
Google Science Fair site
for regular updates.
Posted by: Cristin Frodella, Google Education Team
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