Category: Google Docs

Google has announced that they will be making some minor menu updates to some of the G Suite apps starting in January.  The updates are primarily focused on Google Docs and Google Slides with the idea being to make it easier for users to find certain menu settings.

The changes that Google outlined will be coming to the apps starting January 4, 2018 with the schedule release of the updates.  It should be noted that the changes that are coming are only for the online version of the apps.  Google Docs, Google Sheets and Google Slides for Android and iOS are not impacted by this change.

As for the changes themselves, most of them are renaming of features and not necessarily moving them.  For example, in both Google Docs and Google Slides, “Lists” in the Format menu have been renamed to “Bullets and numbering”.

Google has begun the rollout of several big changes to the G Suite of apps, Google Docs, Sheets & Slides.  The updates are rolling out to the web-based versions of the apps currently but you can expect some of this functionality to eventually make it to the mobile apps.

According to the announcement from Google, there are four improvements that are rolling out now.

1. Name versions of a Doc, Sheet or Slide. Being able to assign custom names to versions of your document is a great way to keep a historical record of your team’s progress. It’s also helpful for communicating when a document is actually final. You can organize and track your team’s changes in one place under “Version history” (formerly known as “Revision history”) on the web. Select File > Version history > Name current version. For even quicker recall, there’s an option to select “Only show named versions” in Docs, Sheets or Slides.
2. Preview “clean versions” of Docs to see what your Doc looks like without comments or suggested edits. Select Tools > Review suggested edits > Preview accept all OR Preview reject all.
3. Accept or reject all edit suggestions at once in your Doc so your team doesn’t have to review every single punctuation mark or formatting update. Select Tools > Review suggested edits > Accept all OR Reject all.
4. Suggest changes in a Doc from an Android, iPhone or iPad device. Click the three dots menu in the bottom right of your Doc screen to suggest edits on-the-go. Turn on the “Suggest changes” toggle and start typing in “suggestion mode.”

All of these changes are aimed at making it quicker and easier for you to collaborate on documents and work through the change process on them.

Google Drive is a great service for storing your files and photos.  You get 15GB free and if you want or need more storage, you can get an additional 100GB for just $1.99 per month.  But let’s suppose for a minute you signed up for 100GB, use about 30GB and decide you want to cancel your subscription?  You are 15GB over the free limit so what happens to your files, photos and other things you have stored in Google Drive?  In short, not much.  It comes down to the service you are using tied to Google Drive but the data that you have there will remain there and not be deleted.  That’s the good news.  The not-so-good news is that your Gmail will start bouncing incoming messages.

Let’s deal with Google Drive itself first.  If you are over your quota, you won’t be able to upload new files.  Period.  Equally, syncing between your Google Drive folder on your PC or Mac will stop.  But, and critically, you can still create Google Docs, Google Sheets and Google Slides files as they don’t consume any space anyway.  It isn’t necessarily a loophole in that the Google apps never used your quota anyway but it certainly is a way to keep on creating documents.  But keep in mind that the sync between your computer and your Google Drive stops so any Google Docs files created will only show up online in Chrome.  Those PDFs and Microsoft Office files? Yeah, no more uploading and syncing.

An option you would have – which I have done – is to convert your Microsoft Office files to Google.  This can be done via the web app or the Android app quite easily.  Just open up that Word document then go to File and convert it to Google Docs.  You can do the same for Excel files and PowerPoint files.  Once you have done your conversions, be sure to go to your Google Drive trash folder and empty it.  That will delete the Office files and reclaim your quota.  Keep in mind that reclaiming can take up to 24 hours to happen.

Google Docs for Android had a nice update last week that brings more document editing power to the mobile app.  The update is still rolling out so it may be another day or two before you see it.  Once you do have it, you will find that you can now edit the headers and footers of your documents from within the app.  You can also now drag-and-drop text in a Docs file.

In addition to manipulating text, you can also manipulate images that you have inserted into your Docs file.  You can resize, rotate and move images within the file as well as adjust the text wrap around that image.

Google Docs has an update rolling out today that brings the ability for you to insert a GIF animation into a document… and it not break!  The update comes into Google Docs but there are also updates to Google Sheets and Google Slides too.  All of these updates are in rapid release which means that users should see the updated versions of these apps hit their devices over the course of the next few days.

For all three apps, you now have the ability to not only view your Trash folder for the app but also restore files from your trash folder.  Now you don’t have to go to the desktop version of Docs, Sheets or Slides to do a file restore.

Google is in the process of rolling out updates to their Android apps for Google Docs, Google Sheets and Google Slides.  The updates, mainly aimed at G Suite customers, brings a lot of improvements to each app individually but collectively brings them all in-app notifications.  Today, the way it works, is if you are collaborating with someone on a document, you get a notification that they have updated it – in Google Drive.  With the update to the apps, now you get the notifications within each app.  It is a bit of a no-brainer really.  Each app’s notifications are separate from the others so you will only see notifications for Google Sheets in Google Sheets.

Read on as there are other improvements beyond notifications.