Google Drive Blog
The latest news and updates from the Google Drive team.
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!
Labels
#SafeOnline
accessibility
add-ons
Android
app scripts
apps
attachments
avery
back to school
blind
braille
charts
chat
Chrome
Chrome extensions
chrome web apps
Cloud Connect
collaboration
comments
community
discussions
docs
docs editors
document list
documents
documents list
drawings
Drive
drivebacktoschool
easybib
education
enterprise
Faces of Docs
folders
forms
gmail
gone google
Google Apps Blog
Google Apps Script
Google Cloud Connect
google docs
Google Docs Viewer
google documents
google drive
Google Drive Blog
Google Pack
Google Sites
Google+
googlenew
Guest Post
hangout on air
help
holiday
images
iOS
Keep
letterfeed
low-vision
mailchimp
mobile
nanowrimo
OCR
office compatibility mode
offline
paperless
pdfs
photo
photos
presentations
product ideas
profiles
quickoffice
Reddit
research
save to drive
screen reader
scripts
security
sharing
sheet
sheets
shortcut
slides
spell check
spreadsheets
stock photos
storage
students
suggested edits
tables
teachers
team
templates
videos
Viewer
work
Archive
2016
Sep
May
Apr
Feb
Jan
2015
Dec
Nov
Oct
Jul
Mar
Feb
Jan
2014
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jun
Apr
Mar
Jan
2013
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2012
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
2011
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2010
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2009
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2008
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2007
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2006
Dec
Nov
Oct
Feed
Visit our site
Google Drive
Google Docs, Sheets, Slides
Google
on
Follow @googledrive
Give us feedback in our
Product Forum
.
.gif)
.png)
