Google Drive Blog
The latest news and updates from the Google Drive team.
New Google Sheets: faster, more powerful, and works offline
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
(
Cross-posted from the
Official Google Blog
)
Whether you’re crunching big data or tracking your family budget, you don’t want to waste time waiting for files to load or re-doing edits that were lost because your Internet connection dropped. You can now get more done by
switching to
the new version of Google Sheets. It’s faster, supports larger spreadsheets, has a number of new features, and works offline.
Bigger, faster spreadsheets
The new Sheets supports millions of cells and kicks many of the old size and complexity limits to the curb. Scrolling, loading and calculation are all snappier, even in more complex spreadsheets.
New features based on your feedback and requests
Filter views
is a new feature unique to Google Sheets that lets you quickly name, save and share different views of your data. This comes in handy when you’re collaborating so you can sort a spreadsheet without affecting how others see it.
Whether you’re new to formulas or a whiz at running complex functions, it’s now easier to set up and perform calculations. New
function help
and examples guide you as you type, and error highlighting and coloring make it easy to spot and fix mistakes.
As another time-saving improvement,
text now automatically flows
into empty adjacent cells—no manual merge needed.
With the improved
conditional formatting
, you can add rules to change the colors and styles of cells in your spreadsheet based on custom formulas.
No internet connection? Work offline with Chrome
You shouldn’t have to think about whether you have a WiFi connection when you want to work. So just like Google Docs and Slides, you can now make edits to Sheets offline. When you reconnect to the Internet, your edits will automatically sync. If you've edited Docs or Slides offline in the past, then you’re already set up to edit Sheets offline. If not, follow these
one-time instructions
for setting up offline in Chrome.
Ready to try it out?
Turn on the new Sheets by checking the “Try the new Google Sheets” box in
Google Drive settings
. From then on, all new spreadsheets you create will work offline and include these new features. We’ll be adding a small list of
missing features
in the coming months, so if you rely on any of them, you may want to wait a little longer before opting in.
We hope you enjoy these and the many other updates that come along with the new Google Sheets, including
colored sheet tabs
,
custom number formatting
,
paste transpose
and more. Let us know what you think on our
Google+ page
!
Posted by: Zach Lloyd, Software Engineer
Attachments in Gmail, now with the power of Google Drive
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Cross-posted on the
Official Google Blog
and
Gmail Blog
You're probably used to downloading email attachments, but each of those files takes time to download, eats up space on your device, and can get buried deep inside your "Downloads" folder. With today's update to Gmail, you can skip that whole process. Instead, you can view attachments
and
save files directly to Google Drive without ever leaving Gmail, making it easy to access them later from whatever device you’re on—computer, phone or tablet.
The next time you open an email with attachments, you’ll see new previews of the files at the bottom of the email, from photos and videos to spreadsheets and PDFs.
When you click on one of those previews, a full-screen view of the image or document will appear. You can read, search for a particular phrase, and even browse through multiple attachments right in Gmail.
You can now also save your attachments directly to Drive simply by clicking the Drive button that appears when you hover over the preview. Of course, if you prefer to download the attachment to your computer, you can—just click the arrow button.
This new attachment experience is available on desktop and will be rolling out over the next week. If you’re one of the more than 120 million active Drive users, you know that saving your files to Drive lets you get to them from any computer, phone or tablet. And if you aren’t taking advantage of Drive just yet, give it a try with your next Gmail attachment.
Posted by Scott Johnston, Director of Product Management
Real time text cursors and other enhancements in Slides
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
The Docs editors make it easy to work with others on the same file at the same time. And the next time you are working with others on a presentation in Slides, you'll see their names appear next to their cursor as they type—just like in Docs.
Also, many of you have been editing themes in Slides for the last few weeks and sending us helpful feedback. Today you’ll be able to make use of a couple of new ways to save time and customize your presentations.
Reuse custom themes in new presentations
There may come a time when you want to
reuse a theme
that you worked hard to create, and now you can—just select “From another presentation…” in the theme chooser.
Add objects to themes and layouts
While editing a slide, you can now right click on any object and add it to a theme or a specific layout so that the next time you want to use it, it will already be part of the slide template.
Update text styles in placeholders
Let's say you're editing a body placeholder, and you change the font of your text (or other style properties, such as bold, color, etc.). You can now easily apply this formatting across slides that use the same layout by right clicking on the placeholder and selecting "Update in theme."
Posted by Julian Pulgarin, Software Engineer
Handwriting input comes to Gmail and Google Docs
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
(Cross-posted on the
Gmail blog
)
Gmail and Docs offer wide language support, however in some cases using the keyboard is less than ideal. Whether you’re a student trying to include a foreign phrase in your paper or an international consultant hoping to begin your message with a friendly local greeting, now you’ll be able to use your own handwriting to input words directly into Gmail and Google Docs with your mouse or trackpad. To try it out,
enable input tools in Gmail
or
Docs
and select the handwriting input (represented by a pencil icon) of the language you want to use.
You can write single or even multiple characters at once in the panel to see them show up in your message or document. Currently, handwriting input is available in Google Docs for over 20 languages and in Gmail for over 50 languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Hindi and Russian.
Handwriting input makes the internet easier to use by people worldwide and is also part of a larger effort to break the barrier between languages, check it out in
Google Mobile Search
, Google Translate (
Web
,
Android
and
iOS
), and the
Chrome browser
.
Posted by Xiangye Xiao, Product Manager
More magic in Slides: editable themes and widescreen presentations
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
Presentations give you the ability to bring a story to life in a visually compelling way—whether it’s a pitch for a new product idea, a deck for a history class assignment, or an introduction to your surfing club. Today you can take the magic up a notch with two new features in Slides—widescreen format and editable master slides.
With widescreen presentations, you get a ton of new space to fill with words, charts, tables or even a simple, beautiful image.
Since the majority of monitors and displays are now widescreen, new presentations will be widescreen by default. You can change the size of your slides using the pull down menu in the theme chooser, or by visiting Page setup in the File menu.
Every presentation you make with Slides has a theme that comes with a set of preset colors, font styles and sizes, backgrounds, etc. to give you a consistent look and feel throughout your deck.
One of your top requests has been to customize these presets throughout your presentation. With editable master slides, you can now easily tailor how content appears on every slide by selecting "Edit master" from the Slide menu. For example, you can set all of your header fonts to Alconica, make all of your first level bullets bold, and add a logo in the bottom right corner.
Voila! The thumbnail previews alongside the master show that all of these changes are made instantly across all of the slides in your presentation.
And that’s not all. Each theme consists of a variety of slide layouts, which can also now be
individually customized or created from scratch
.
We hope that these new ways to customize Slides help you tell better stories, and look forward to seeing the beautiful themes that you come up with. Look out for these updates throughout the course of the day.
Since so many of you have been requesting custom themes, we want to see what you can do!
Share your own custom theme on Google+
with the hashtag #mygoogleslides and we'll feature the most impressive & beautiful presentations on our
+page
.
Posted by: Michael Thomas, Software Engineer
Content & Color: An updated look for Docs, Sheets & Slides
Monday, September 30, 2013
Starting today, things are about to get cleaner—and more colorful—in Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, Forms and Apps Script. First, you’ll notice each editor’s product icon displayed in the header, which doubles as a quick link back to all your files in Drive. Next, you’ll see that the header is more streamlined and compact, helping you to focus on what matters most—your content.
We hope these updates make your creation and collaboration experience just a bit more delightful. Enjoy!
Posted by Sarah Cooper, User Experience Designer
Freeing Quickoffice for everyone
Thursday, September 19, 2013
Everyone likes free stuff, which is why starting today we’re making Quickoffice available for free, for everyone. With Quickoffice, you can edit Microsoft® Office documents across your devices, giving you the freedom to work with anyone no matter what hardware or software they’re using. Quickoffice also integrates seamlessly with
Google Drive
storage so you can safely access your files from anywhere. And while the easiest thing to do is simply convert your old files to Google Docs, Sheets and Slides, Quickoffice gives you another way to work with people who haven’t
gone Google
yet.
You can get the new, free Quickoffice app for Android and iOS phones and tablets on
Google Play
and in the
App Store
. Simply sign in with your Google Account to start editing Microsoft Office documents, spreadsheets and presentations on mobile. You’ll also notice a number of new features, including a refreshed icon, the ability to create .ZIP folders, and view charts in Excel® and PowerPoint® files. Plus, the new app works across devices so you don’t have to worry about installing separate versions anymore when you go from using your phone to editing on your tablet.
While we’re on the topic of free stuff, if you sign in to your Google Account from the new Quickoffice app for Android or iOS by September 26, 2013, an extra 10GB of Google Drive storage will be added to your account for two years (look for it in the next few weeks). So don’t let your hardware or software differences get in the way of true collaboration -- download the new app and start working together today.
Note
:
Previous versions of Quickoffice have been removed from Google Play and the App Store.
Learn more
about how this affects customers currently using Quickoffice Pro, Quickoffice Pro HD. Users who have the Quickoffice for Google Apps for Business app will receive an update notification to upgrade to this new version.
Posted by Alan Warren, Engineering VP, Google
Four new ways to customize your Google Forms
Monday, September 9, 2013
From classroom pop quizzes to RSVPs for your family reunion, you can use Google Forms in tons of different ways -- which is why it's important to be able to customize each form to fit your needs. Starting today, you’ll be able to take advantage of four new features to create your perfect form: progress bars, data validation, embedded YouTube videos, and custom messages.
Guide respondents through your survey with a progress bar
Sometimes it’s helpful to give respondents a sense of how much of a survey still needs to be completed, and now you can by turning on a progress bar in your form.
To turn it on, just check the progress bar box in the Form Settings tab.
Get results the way you want them with data validation
Let’s say you’re using Forms to collect sign ups for an email newsletter. With data validation, you can now ensure that the email addresses are formatted correctly, and consequently avoid those unpleasant bounce-back messages.
To get started, create a new Text question in Forms, then click on the Data validation tab. Click the checkbox and select “Text,” then “Email address,” and voila, the survey taker will see an error message if they don’t enter an email address.
You can also set up data validation for maximum character count, numbers, zip codes, and
more
.
Embed YouTube videos
You can now embed a YouTube video right inside a form -- perfect if you want to get feedback or ask questions about a video.
This works really well for quizzes in class, especially if paired with data validation and the progress bar. Embed a video and then use data validation to give hints when students enter incorrect answers, and add a progress bar so they know how far along they are in the quiz.
Add a custom message to closed forms
Sometimes when a form is closed, you still want to make information available for respondents who weren’t able to complete it in time.
After you’ve switched your form to “Not accepting responses,” you can now add your own message and instructions for follow up.
Posted by Elynn Lee, Software Engineer
A completely new look for Drive on iOS
Thursday, September 5, 2013
One of the features you’ve told us you want on Drive for iOS is the ability to effortlessly browse and preview files, just like you can on
Android
. Today’s update delivers that same card-style thumbnail layout, along with a number of other upgrades that make it even easier to use Drive on your iPhone or iPad.
You can toggle between the new thumbnail view and the traditional list view with just the press of a button. Plus, in this latest version of the app, files and folders are grouped more intuitively instead of being mixed together, and you can view and edit files in landscape mode.
It’s also now easier to copy the link for any Drive file (great for if you need to include it in an email, add it to a note, or text it to a friend). Just visit the details pane of the file you want and select ‘Get link’ to automatically copy the link to your clipboard. And while you're in the details pane, check out the other things you can do, like moving the file into one of your Drive folders or sharing it with a friend.
And last, we brought search to the forefront of the app so you can find the exact file you're looking for, whether you're on a small iPhone or a larger iPad. And remember, Drive search recognizes objects in your images
and
text in scanned documents. So the next time you’re looking for photos of that trip to the Statue of Liberty, just enter the phrase “Statue of Liberty” and your photos will appear – voilà!
Head over to the
Apple App Store
now to download the app and see it in action.
Posted by Kelvin Chan, Software Engineer
Head back to school with Drive: Student Edition
Monday, August 26, 2013
Guest posted by Alex Nagourney
Alex Nagourney is a 2013 graduate of Wellesley College. She was a 2011 Google BOLD intern and a Google Student Ambassador from 2011-2013. She currently lives in New York City.
Summer is coming to an end, which for college students usually means the end of a grueling internship, a road-trip or cross-country flight back to campus, embracing friends you have not seen in months, and, oh yeah, that other tiny detail: the start of classes.
With so much else going on — friends, extracurriculars, sports — students today need to be as efficient and productive as possible when they dedicate time to studying and doing homework. In this age of internet transformation, Gen Y is more tech savvy than ever before, and we expect online education to meet our technology standards.
The purpose (and hope) of this blog post is to give a few examples of how I used — and benefitted from —
Google Docs, Slides, and Forms
in college.
Example 1: Have a group project? Stay calm, cool, and collected. Docs make collaboration easy!
If you have ever had to work on a group paper or project, you know how cumbersome and inefficient the process can be. There are two ways to go about accomplishing this task: (1) your group sends 173 emails trying to coordinate a time at which everyone is available to meet or (2) each person writes a portion of the paper and the group tries to synthesize uncoordinated chunks of different writing styles into one cohesive paper, which always ends with one Type A student editing the entire thing. Luckily, there is now an option 3, and it’s called Google Docs.
To start using Docs, just
open a doc
, share it with the group members, and write. It’s that simple. Having the ability to work together in the cloud means no coordinating schedules, no wasting time on multiple revisions, and no unequal division of group member contributions.
For example, when I had to complete a group paper for an Economics class, my two groupmates and I decided we would each write one-third of the paper. We put our respective portions into a single document and then went through each other’s writing, adding comments and correcting errors when necessary.
Example 2: Google Slides. Enough Said.
Presentations are an inevitable college assignment. Whether you are a history or physics major, you cannot escape this task. Before using Slides, the process of creating presentations was inefficient, awkward (so...what should we put on this slide…?) and time-consuming.
For one of my physics laboratory experiments, my partner was an exchange student from France. While we understood each other in the lab by scribbling Greek letters and numbers to solve problems, at times it was difficult to communicate since English wasn’t her first language. So when we had to create our presentation, it sounded like a grueling task for both of us.
We decided to use
Slides
, divide the work, add notes, and edit together from within the presentation. Our communication was clear and efficient when we typed comments to each other since we could take our time to be articulate, which virtually dissolved our language barrier. In the end, creating the presentation was quite enjoyable; we were proud of the final product and our professors were impressed by how well we worked together.
Example 3: Using Forms to organize information and make it universally accessible and useful...sound familiar?
Being a full-time student and an active member of an extracurricular activity (sport, club, fraternity/sorority, etc.) can sometimes feel like a full-time job. It requires teamwork, organization, time-management, and dedication.
Being the leader of a group demands more: writing agendas, scheduling meetings, organizing fundraisers, and sticking to a budget. Keeping track of all of these items can be difficult, as each task requires different resources — email, documents, spreadsheets, polls, and more.
As the house president of a 165-student residence hall for two years, I struggled to keep track of it all, but after switching to Forms, the whole process became seamless.
For our fundraiser, my house sold over 300 t-shirts to the student body. Because of the high quantity, we utilized a pre-order process in which students could order their size/color and pay in advance. Before we had Google Forms, we used a paper form to collect pre-orders (I still try to block out all those hours spent inputting the paper orders into my computer!).
Not only did using a
form
make it easier to collect pre-orders, it also made it easier to distribute the order form. As a result, our pre-orders increased by 40% in one year! The form did all of the heavy lifting for me. Orders were seamlessly filed into a spreadsheet, and I simply had to click “Show summary of responses” to place the order, making my job easier and freeing up time so that I could focus on other aspects of my role as a leader.
So there you have it, three examples of how using Docs, Slides, and Forms in college made me more efficient, saved me time, and increased my productivity. For those of you about to begin a new semester, good luck!
Here, there and everywhere—Google Keep reminds you at the right time
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
(Cross-posted from the
Android Blog
)
Notes are a good way to keep track of all you have to do, but most of us need a little nudge now and then. Google Keep can remind you of important tasks and errands at just the right time and place. For example, Keep works with Google Now to remind you of your grocery list when you walk into your favorite grocery store, and nudges you on Thursday night to take out the trash.
To get started, select the “Remind me” button from the bottom of any note and choose the type of reminder you want to add. You can add time-based reminders for a specific date and time, or a more general time of day, like tomorrow morning. Adding a location reminder is incredibly easy too – as soon as you start typing Google Keep suggests places nearby.
Of course, sometimes plans change. If you get a reminder you’re not ready to deal with, simply snooze it to a time or place that’s better for you. It’s now even easier to get to all of your notes using the new navigation drawer, which includes a way to view all of your upcoming reminders in one place. And for people who want more separation between their home and work lives, the drawer also lets you easily switch between your accounts.
And finally, we’ve made it easier to add your existing photos to a Google Keep note on Android. When you tap the camera icon you can choose between taking a new photo or adding one you already have from Gallery.
The new update is gradually rolling out in
Google Play
, and available now on the web at
http://drive.google.com/keep
and in the
Chrome App
.
Posted by Erin Rosenthal, Product Manager
Head back to school with Drive: Teacher Edition
Monday, August 19, 2013
Posted by guest blogger Wendy Gorton
Wendy Gorton is an education consultant for organizations around the world. She’s a former classroom teacher, Google Certified Teacher and Trainer, and is passionate about creating learner-centered environments using tools like
Google Apps for Education
.
Follow the
Drive Google+ page
this and next week for daily tips and suggestions for using Drive in the classroom.
Google Drive
is the all-in-one tool I wish I had my first year of teaching. It not only keeps all of your lesson plans, activities, and research organized, but it's an outstanding way to engage your students, give them feedback, and give their writing a real audience—like their peers or classrooms around the world.
Here are 3 tips to help teachers prepare for going back to school with
Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms
.
1. Use Slides to get to know your students
A great first-week introductory activity is to create a single slide deck, and then invite each of your students to share a bit about themselves on their own personal slide. It’s a fantastic get-to-know-you activity for the first week of school and you’ll be amazed by the creativity that comes out of your students!
The screenshot below shows how Google Student Ambassadors from 9 different countries used
Slides
to introduce themselves before gathering to meet each other at an event in Indonesia this summer.
Want to get this going with your students? Easy—
create a new Slides deck
on the first week of school, click the blue Share button to invite your students, and give them a little direction for their individual slide by
adding comments
.
2. Use Docs to create a classroom “Bill of Rights”
The first week of class is that precious transition from the “honeymoon” period of angelic children to learning the norms of your classroom culture. Help start the year off right by inviting students to co-create their ideas of citizenship and a happy learning environment,
Docs
style.
Start by
creating a copy of this template
and then invite students to join in with you to add their ideas, ratify by adding a comment, and use their editing prowess to come up with a final copy to live by for the coming year.
3. Use Forms to get to know your students (and their prior knowledge!)
Get to know your classroom as soon as possible, using
Forms
to gather information about their needs, interests, and abilities beforehand. Consider creating a simple Form for a survey for your students (and for your parents!) and have fun showing the data on your projector and learning about your class as a whole.
Forms can be used as a very quick getting started activity before any lesson as well—take this example from a social studies classroom before talking about population. By
placing a quick Form
on your classroom site or emailing your students the Form, you can quickly grasp your students' prior knowledge—before you start teaching.
In this case, our team was a bit off, but helped us not only talk about population but estimation and numbers in general (answer? 7.1 billion
and counting
. My favorite answer? One ‘goggle.’)
One last tip: Google Apps for Education
You know this is way easier when your school has its own
Google Apps for education
set up, right? It’s free, and no technical expertise is needed to
get started
.
I hope you give one of these ideas a try and let me know how it goes on my
Google+ page
.
18 New Languages for Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Google Drive lets you store and access your files anywhere -- on the web, your computer, your phone, or on the go. Whether you’re presenting slides in a boardroom in São Paulo or negotiating a Japanese contract in Tokyo, Google Drive speaks your language:
65 of them
, to be exact, with the addition of 18 new ones today:
Afrikaans, Amharic, Basque, Chinese (Hong Kong), Estonian, French (Canada), Galician, Icelandic, Khmer, Lao, Malaysian, Nepali, Persian, Sinhalese, Spanish (Latin America), Swahili, Urdu, Zulu
You can
switch
back and forth as often as you like, and many of these languages are also supported by Drive’s spellchecker.
Love to collaborate? No matter which Drive app you’re using --
Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms
-- you can work in real time in any language you choose while your fellow collaborators use another language.
To try Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides in another language, you can switch by:
Clicking the
gear icon
in the upper right, then select
Settings
.
Under
General
, select a language from the drop-down menu in the Language section.
Click
Save
. You’re done!
To change the language for Google Drive for mobile, go to your device’s language settings. If you don’t yet have Drive for mobile, you can visit the
Google Play
or
Apple App Store
to get the Google Drive app.
Posted by Ian Hill, Project Manager, Google Localization
A smoother Drive app for Android
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
The process of creating and accessing your stuff shouldn’t be, well...a process. Today, the
Drive app for Android
is getting several improvements to make creating and accessing your stuff on-the-go even easier.
To help you find the content you care about, Drive files will now be displayed in a clean, simple card-style. You can swipe between files to see large previews that let you quickly review and discover the information you’re looking for. And if you want to keep some Drive files on your Android device, you’ll now be able to “download a copy” from the actions menu inside settings.
The updated Drive for Android app also gives you to a way to keep track of important paper documents like receipts, letters, and billing statements. Simply click “Scan” from the Add New menu, snap a photo of your document, and Drive will turn the document into a PDF that’s stored for safekeeping. And because Drive can recognize text in scanned documents using
Optical Character Recognition
(OCR) technology, a simple search will retrieve the scanned document later. No more frantic scrambling through drawers looking for a receipt or digging through your pockets to find that business card -- just scan, upload and search in Drive.
The
editing experience
in Google Sheets has also gotten some improvements: now you can adjust font types and sizes for a spreadsheet and tweak the cell text colors and cell alignment right from the app. Plus, the Drive app comes with Cloud Print support so you can print anything from Drive with a
Cloud Ready printer
-- perfect if you need to, say, print that extra resume right before a job interview.
Get the Google Drive app today on
Google Play
and circle us on
Google+
for continued updates.
Posted by Denis Teplyashin, Software Engineer
Bringing it all together: 15 GB now shared between Drive, Gmail, and Google+ Photos
Monday, May 13, 2013
Life gets a bit easier when your Google products work well together—whether that’s inserting a Drive file into an email or sharing a photo from Drive on Google+. As this experience becomes more seamless, separate storage doesn’t make as much sense anymore. So instead of having 10 GB for Gmail and another 5 GB for Drive and Google+ Photos, you’ll now get 15 GB of unified storage for free to use as you like between Drive, Gmail, and Google+ Photos.
With this new combined storage space, you won’t have to worry about how much you’re storing and where. For example, maybe you’re a heavy Gmail user but light on photos, or perhaps you were bumping up against your Drive storage limit but were only using 2 GB in Gmail. Now it doesn’t matter, because you can use your storage the way you want.
We’ll also be making updates to the
Google Drive storage page
, so you can better understand how you’re using storage space. Simply hover over the pie chart to see a breakdown of your storage use across Drive, Gmail, and Google+ Photos. And if you need more storage, this is your place to upgrade, with plans starting at $4.99/month for 100 GB.
Pro tip: This change means you’re no longer limited to a 25 GB upgrade in Gmail—any additional storage you purchase now applies there, too.
These changes to Google Drive storage will roll out over the next couple of weeks. Google Apps users will also be getting shared storage, so visit the
enterprise blog
to learn more.
Posted by Clay Bavor, Director of Product Management
Access Google Keep with the new Chrome app
Thursday, May 2, 2013
Last month, Google Keep
launched
to help you quickly jot down ideas and keep track of things while on the go with your
Android
device or
on the web
. Today, with the launch of a new
Chrome app
, Google Keep is even easier to access on your computer using Chrome.
The Google Keep Chrome app launches in its own window, so you can create notes, cross out your to-do lists, and attach photos to tasks while you work on other things. And if you don’t have an internet connection, don’t fret: the Chrome app works offline because we all know that ideas (big and small) can be sparked at any time.
You can visit the
Chrome Web Store
to add the app today (use the link, you won’t find it in search)!
Happy note taking!
Posted by Eddy Mead, Software Engineer
Bringing people together in Drive
Thursday, April 25, 2013
More often than not, you need to work with others to get things done. Today, working together in Drive is getting even easier with new profile pictures and one-click group chat.
Now when you open a file in Drive, you’ll see the profile pictures of other viewers at the top instead of just their names, making it easy for you to do a quick scan of who else is in the file. You can hover over a photo to see details about the viewer and add them to your circles on Google+ — all without ever leaving Drive.
In addition, you can now start a group chat with just one click. Simply select the new chat button at the top right and a chat box will appear, making it easy for you to quickly message everyone in the file.
These new features will roll out over the next day or two, and we’ll be adding support for more file types (like Google Sheets) soon, so stay tuned. In the meantime, visit our
Google+ page
and let us know what your favorite anonymous character is!
Posted by Eric Zhang, Software Engineer (Anonymous Monkey)
Google Keep—Save what’s on your mind
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
(
Cross-posted from the
Android Blog
)
Every day we all see, hear or think of things we need to remember. Usually we grab a pad of sticky-notes, scribble a reminder and put it on the desk, the fridge or the relevant page of a magazine. Unfortunately, if you’re like me you probably often discover that the desk, fridge or magazine wasn’t such a clever place to leave the note after all...it’s rarely where you need it when you need it.
To solve this problem we’ve created Google Keep. With Keep you can quickly jot ideas down when you think of them and even include checklists and photos to keep track of what’s important to you. Your notes are safely stored in Google Drive and synced to all your devices so you can always have them at hand.
If it’s more convenient to speak than to type that’s fine—Keep transcribes voice memos for you automatically. There’s super-fast search to find what you’re looking for and when you’re finished with a note you can archive or delete it.
Changing priorities isn’t a problem: just open Keep on your Android phone or tablet (there’s a widget so you can have Keep front and center all the time) and drag your notes around to reflect what matters. You can choose the color for each note too.
Pro tip: for adding thoughts quickly without unlocking your device there's a lock screen widget (on devices running Android 4.2+).
Google Keep
is available on Google Play for devices running Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich and above. You can access, edit and create new notes on the web at
http://drive.google.com/keep
and in the coming weeks you'll be able to do the same directly from Google Drive.
Posted by Katherine Kuan, Software Engineer
Preview files in Google Drive
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
It may sound obvious, but sometimes the best way to find something is to start looking. Beginning today, Google Drive will let you quickly preview more than
30 file types
and quickly flip between files until you find the one you want.
You’ll see the new preview automatically if you open a photo, video, or PDF. To see a preview of a Google document, right-click on the file name and select “preview.” Once the preview window is open, you can click on the arrows on either side to flip to other files. And right from within the preview, you can watch video files or scroll through multi-page documents.
You can select and copy text from the preview -- even for a PDF or Microsoft Word document -- or use the zoom buttons to see a file in more detail. Each file preview also gives you one-click access to share, download, print or open a file for editing.
This feature will roll out over the next few days.
Posted by: Ian Kilpatrick, Google Drive Engineer
Google Forms, Refreshed
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
With Google Drive, you can do more than just create, store, and share stuff. A variety of apps can help with
everything
from
editing spreadsheets
to
signing documents electronically
.
Forms
let you easily create questionnaires and automatically collect responses in a spreadsheet. Today a new version launches, rebuilt to bring you a faster, cleaner, and more collaborative experience.
Now with collaboration
Create a form faster than ever. Just as with
Docs, Sheets and Slides
, you can now collaborate with others in real-time. If you need to work with two colleagues on a survey, all three of you can work on the same form simultaneously and even have a group chat on the side, without leaving the form.
Better editing
Even if you’re working solo, some new changes will make creating and editing forms easier. All your changes are auto-saved and you can quickly undo/redo edits. Improved copy-and-paste will let you copy a list of bullets from the web or multiple rows of text from a spreadsheet; then, when you paste into a form, each line will be appear as an individual answer. And you can use keyboard shortcuts to get things done more quickly.
Some things unchanged
With the new Forms editor, you can continue using all the features you’re already familiar with:
Scale: Whether you’re collecting responses from ten friends for a baby shower or ten thousand attendees at a conference, you can count on Forms to reliably collect data for any number of responses.
Analyzing: See the responses you’ve received right in Google Forms or collect them neatly in Google Sheets. And you can now download a .csv file for more detailed analysis and reporting.
Sharing: If you share a form directly in Google+, anyone in your circles can respond without leaving their stream. Or if you send a form via email, respondents can submit their answers right from Gmail.
This update to Forms will roll out over the next few days. You can create forms directly from Google Sheets or Drive, or install the
Chrome Web App
for easy access from your browser. Also check the
Google Drive +page
all week for tips and tricks.
Posted by: Nick Santos, Software Engineer
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