Google Drive Blog
The latest news and updates from the Google Drive team.
Lock down cells with Protected Ranges in Google spreadsheets
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Editing with others in real-time makes it easy to get stuff done in Google spreadsheets in only a matter of minutes. But with so many people working in the same space, it’s possible to modify a section that a collaborator didn’t intend to be touched. That’s why, today, we’re updating the
Named Ranges
feature in spreadsheets to let you also protect them.
To get started with Protected Ranges in a shared spreadsheet, highlight the cells you’d like to protect, right-click, and choose
Name and protect range
from the menu.
Click through the presentation below to see the feature in action.
Even more spreadsheet features added this month
Along with the arrival of protected ranges, you can now add colors and patterns when you apply cell borders in Google spreadsheets. We also updated find and replace to make it possible to search using patterns (also called
regular expressions
). For example, “^[A-Z]+” will find all the cells that start with uppercase letters.
As always, Google spreadsheets is getting better every day, so stay tuned for even more features and updates in the coming weeks.
Posted by: Joe Kaptur, Software Engineer
450+ new ways to make your Google presentations pop
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Good design is an important part of getting your point across in a presentation. Over time we’ve added a bunch of features to help you bring a little something extra to your decks, like
slide transitions and animations
,
thousands of free stock photos
, and a
growing collection of templates
.
Today, creating eye-catching presentations gets even easier, with more than 450 new fonts to choose from. (flip through the presentation below to see them in action)
To browse and select new fonts, click on
Add fonts
from the bottom of the fonts dropdown in the toolbar. This will take you to the menu of all available fonts, where you can pick the ones you want to use.
Any fonts that you select will get automatically added to your fonts list so it’s easy to find them later.
Plus, fonts that you’ve already added to
Google documents
will automatically appear in your presentations font list too.
So next time you're working on a presentation, jazz it up with some
Calligrafitti
,
Indie Flower
,
Short Stack
, or hundreds of other new choices.
Posted by Erin Rosenbaum, Software Engineer
Offline updates and a quick look back at June
Friday, July 13, 2012
Summer brings fun in the sun (in our hemisphere, at least) and a bunch of updates to Google Drive. A few weeks ago at Google I/O, we
announced
a couple of highly requested features: the ability to edit Google documents offline and a
Drive app for iOS
.
When you
enable Docs offline
in Google Drive, you can create & edit Google documents and view Google spreadsheets, without being connected to the internet. Today we updated the offline experience so it looks the same as when you’re online - except it’s filtered to show just your offline docs. Here’s an extra tip: if you want to preview which files are available offline, select
More > Offline Docs
in the left navigation pane while you’re still connected to the web. This update will roll out to all Drive users over the next few days.
In the past month we’ve also made several other improvements like:
updates
to Google Apps Script including a
standalone script editor
, the ability to create richer user interfaces, options to easily store your application’s data, and support for publishing scripts to the Chrome Web Store
expanded language support in the
documents and presentations spellchecker
to include German, French and Italian
the ability to print documents, spreadsheets, and presentations to any cloud connected printer with Google Cloud Print from any browser
up to 400pt font support in documents and presentations
copying and pasting images
from your desktop into a document or presentation
an easy way to edit or open links from text by right clicking on them
Posted by Owen Merkling, Software Engineer
Announcing your two most requested features: offline document editing and Drive for iOS
Thursday, June 28, 2012
In April, we
introduced
Google Drive, a place where you can create, share, and keep all your stuff. Today at the Google I/O conference
we announced
two new ways to
get things done
in the cloud: offline editing for Google documents and a Drive app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
Offline document editing
No internet connection? No big deal. With
offline editing
, you can create and edit Google documents and leave comments. Any changes you make will be automatically synced when you get back online.
You can enable offline editing from the gear icon in
Google Drive
and find more detailed instructions for getting set up in the
Hilfe-Center
. Note that you’ll need the latest versions of
Chrome
or
ChromeOS
to edit offline. We’re also working hard to make offline editing for spreadsheets and presentations available in the future.
Google Drive for iOS
We launched the
Drive app for Android
phones and tablets a few weeks ago, and starting today, Google Drive is
available for your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch
.
With the Drive app, you can open PDFs, photos, videos, documents and anything else stored in your Drive while you're on the go. You can also search all your files, add collaborators to documents, and make files
available offline
to view them even without an internet connection. For blind and low-vision users, the app also works great in
VoiceOver mode
. Learn more about what you can do with the app in our
Hilfe-Center
.
Get Drive in the
App Store
for your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch running iOS 5.0+ and visit the
Play Store
to get the latest on your Android phone or tablet.
To learn more about Google Drive, visit
drive.google.com/start
.
Posted by Clay Bavor, Product Management Director
Hang out – live on air – with the Google Drive & Docs team
Friday, June 8, 2012
Cross-posted from the
Google Enterprise blog
.
Editor's note:
Hangouts On Air are live video chats, interviews, or performances that are broadcast to Google+. We’ll host these broadcasts from time to time on the
Google Enterprise Google+ page
to give you the inside scoop on our business and products.
Last week, we hosted our first Hangout On Air from the
Google Enterprise Google+ page
with Jonathan Rochelle, Director of Product Management, Jeff Harris, Google Docs Product Manager, Teresa Wu, Google Docs Community Manager, and Eric Brunnett, Director of IT at Trump Hotel Collection.
During the conversation, Jonathan Rochelle told us the story of how Google Docs, Google Drive and cloud collaboration came to be. What was once an experiment to bring desktop software to the web is now a collaboration and productivity platform used by millions of people in their personal lives and at businesses, universities, non-profits and government agencies around the world.
Then, Eric Brunnett fielded questions about his company’s transition to
Google Apps for Business
and how they use shared Google documents and spreadsheets to streamline internal operations and communication. For example, they've moved away from relying on paper forms and long email chains by using Google Forms and Google Apps Scripts to create paperless processes that are more efficient and more trackable.
Last, Jeff Harris demoed some Google Drive features like shared folders and Google documents features like the research pane and contextual spell check, showing how the power of the web is used in Google Apps.
Follow the
Google Enterprise
and
Google Docs
Google+ pages to watch future Hangouts On Air and stay up-to-date on the latest news.
Posted by Julia Harter, Google Enterprise team
Google Docs: May in Review
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
April showers bring May flowers, along with a bunch of new features and updates to Google Docs. In May we launched the
research pane
which makes it easy to look things up and insert quotes, images, and maps into documents without ever having to open a new browser tab. And we also made some other improvements over the last few weeks, like:
the addition of five new themes (Color Strip, Inspiration Board, Lesson Plan, Steps, and Wave) to Google Presentations.
the ability to search for scholarly works in the
research pane
.
making it possible to put a Google Doc in a folder without leaving it by clicking on the folder icon to the right of the star in the toolbar.
teaching the
new spellchecker
a few more languages (Spanish, Dutch, and Finnish).
adding Alt+Enter (Option+Enter on Mac) as a keyboard shortcut for opening links. Simply place your cursor on a link and press the shortcut to open the link in a new tab.
the introduction of
libraries and versions
to Google Apps Script to make it easier for developers to organize, share and reuse their code.
Posted by Jason Ganetsky, Software Engineer
Find facts and do research inside Google Documents
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Today we’re introducing the
research pane
—a new feature that brings the web’s wealth of information to you as you’re writing documents.
The research pane taps into Google Search directly from Google documents, so whether you want to add a cool destination to your itinerary for an upcoming trip to India or you're looking for the perfect presidential quote for a political science paper, you don’t even have to open a new tab.
You can access the research pane from the
Tools
menu by right clicking on a selected word that you want to learn more about, or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+R on Windows or Cmd+Alt+R on Mac. From the research pane, you can search for whatever info you need to help you write your document. With just a couple clicks you can look up maps, quotes, images, and much more.
If you find something you like, you can add it by clicking the insert button or, for images, by dragging them directly into your document. If appropriate we’ll automatically add a footnote citation so there’s a record of where you found the info.
Hopefully bringing knowledge from the web to Google documents will make your writing process just a little bit more efficient.
Posted by Sarveshwar Duddu, Software Engineer
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