Use new Google spreadsheets charts in your documents and drawings

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

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

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

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

Our response to your Product Ideas

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

This week in Docs: New features for your Google Docs videos

Beginning this week, you’ll be able to go beyond simply playing your videos within Google Docs -- you can now insert your videos into Google Sites, embed them anywhere on the web, and caption them for your viewers.

Embed videos in Google Sites
While on your Google site, go to the Insert menu and select Video > Google Docs Video.


From there, choose from the videos that are in your documents list and click Select to insert the video into your Google site.

Embed videos on the web
You can embed your videos anywhere else on the web by using the HTML snippet that is now available on the video’s page. Keep in mind that whether you’re embedding your video into your Google site or somewhere else on the web, only people to whom you’ve given access will be able to view the video. For example, if the video is set to private and shared with four people, only those four people will be able to view it on your Google site.


Add captions to your videos
You can also caption your videos to make them accessible for deaf and hard of hearing viewers or for speakers of different languages. You can find these videos more easily by searching for any text in the transcript of the video from your documents list. (Only people to whom you’ve given access to the video can find the video using this method.)



To give it a try, choose Manage caption tracks from the Actions menu for your video, then click Upload caption track... Anyone who has edit access can upload a track.

Let us know what you think of these new features by leaving us a comment -- or better yet, a video.

Posted by: Patrick Lacz, Software Engineer

Share your docs on the go with the improved Google Docs for mobile

Google Docs is about collaboration, but as many of us know, others often rely on us even when we’re nowhere near a computer. That’s why we’re excited to bring the features you need to your tablet and mobile device’s browser. Today, we've updated the look of Google Docs for mobile browsers and added the ability to sort, narrow, and share multiple docs in your mobile docs list.

To get started, go to docs.google.com from your supported device’s browser. Press Sort to organize the list of docs visible in the mobile browser, or press Narrow by to specify the subset of docs you’d like to see.


To share from your mobile docs list, select one or more documents, press the Share button, and select Share, Get the link to share for public or unlisted docs, or Email as attachment. Sharing a doc in your mobile browser works the same way as it does on the desktop.


We’re committed to improving the experience of accessing your docs from your mobile device. We’d love to hear what you think is working and what isn’t in our support forums as well as in the comments of this post.

Posted by: Hossein Attar, Software Engineer

"Mobile"-ize your business with Google Sites

Building on last week’s post on automatic mobile rendering, we’re excited to introduce five new templates to make it easier for businesses to create mobile landing pages. You can also start from scratch with our custom template if you’re feeling creative.


Watch the video below to see how “small” businessman, Bob, transformed his business using Google Sites:



Visit sites.google.com/mobilize to check out the five templates.

Posted by: Shiv Kumar, Google Mobile Specialist

Automatic mobile rendering for Google Sites

(Cross-posted to the Enterprise blog)

As the dramatic growth of the mobile web changes the way people consume content, it’s becoming increasingly important for publishers to provide a good mobile experience. With this in mind, we just added automatic mobile rendering in Google Sites for iOS 3.0+ and Android 2.2+ devices, and a mobile version of the Google Sites lists.

By going to General settings under More actions > Manage site and clicking on Automatically adjust site for mobile phones, your Google site will be automatically adjusted whenever it’s viewed from an iOS or Android 2.2+ device:

Before

After

The most noticeable automatic adjustments include:

• Aligning the header layout and top bar
  
• Fitting the width of the site to match the device’s width
  
• Smart handling of sidebars, horizontal navigation, and dropdown links

After you’ve enabled this feature, you can preview the page from your computer as a mobile viewer using More actions > Preview as viewer then select Mobile from the yellow Preview page as viewer (Mobile | Desktop) box at the top of the page.

You can also choose to hide some of the links in your site’s footer to save vertical space.


It’s also important for you to be able to access and search your own sites on the go, which is why we’ve also added mobile versions of the site list, sites search, and browse sites categories.


Just navigate to http://sites.google.com from any iOS 3.0+ or Android 2.2+ device for quick access to your sites.

As more people unplug from their desks and interact with content on the go, new doors are opening for everyone. We hope these tools will empower you to meet the challenges of publishing in a mobile world using Google Sites.

Posted by: Luciano Cheng, Software Engineer

Open files more easily in Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office

(Cross-posted to the Enterprise blog)

One of the key features of Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office is the ability to easily sync Office documents up to Google Docs and to collaborate on them with others. You asked us to simplify the experience of downloading and opening Office documents stored in your Google Docs account, so today we’re doing just that. Now you can open any Office file stored in Google Docs directly from within Microsoft Office.

From the Google Cloud Connect menu, click Open from Google Docs…


This will bring up a dialog listing all the documents that can be opened with the application you are using. For example, if you are working in Microsoft PowerPoint, you will see a list of all the Microsoft PowerPoint files available in Google Docs. You can then select the file you want to download and open.


If you have lots of files stored in Google Docs, use search to find the file you are looking for. After selecting a file to open, the file will be downloaded to your computer and opened automatically.

When you want to open the file again, you’ll be able to open it from the folder you downloaded the file into. Now you can collaborate, share and access revision history on that file in Microsoft Office.

As always, we would love to hear your feedback and thoughts.

Posted by: Himanshu Vasishth, Software Engineer