Category: Google Docs

Google continues to develop their suite of Office-like apps, Google Docs, Google Sheets and Google Slides, and the latest update to the web, Android and iOS versions of the app are all aimed at improving collaboration on files.  The updates are rolling out now to the various platforms and for your Android or iOS device, it may be several days before you see the new builds of the apps hit your phone or tablet.

Before I get to the changes that Google announced on the Android apps, let’s first talk about the changes to the web version of Google Docs.  Now you can instantly add a comment when you

Google Docs for Web Comments

highlight a piece of text.  When you highlight that text, on the right you will now see a comment bubble pop up.  Click on it and add your comments about that portion of the text.  Want to add someone to collaborate on the document, just start typing in their name and it will popular their email address in the comments and will send them an email notifying them.  They can then add comments to the document too, bringing teams together in a more efficient way as everyone is working from the same, literal, page.

Now let’s turn to Android.

The world that is Google is expansive.  With dozens of services and solutions, getting your hands (and head) around all that they have to offer and use those services and solutions can be daunting.  Even the most powerful of power users can get lost in the maze so the company has launched Google Tips.  Google Tips is a website that has over 150 tips, tricks and how to’s to make your experience and use of their services and solutions easier.  The tips range from doing like using an app to order groceries to finding your Android phone if you left it somewhere.  There are tips that cover using Google Sheets, privacy settings and how to text hands free.  It’s a pretty impressive start and something that I applaud Google for developing as more people turn to their services and solutions every day.

Google Docs for Android has received a nice update today that brings with it several new and important features to the document processing app.  The update is version 1.4.412.07.30 for those keeping score at home and brings things like spellcheck and word count to the app amongst other features and improvements.  The update to the app is rolling out to the Google Play Store now so you should see it as an OTA update any time today or over the next couple of days.

If you have been considering moving from Microsoft Office to Google Docs, I posted a 4-part series on my move over.  It’s not for everyone but with improvements like the ones today, the transition is certainly getting more on par from a feature perspective.

My Migration to Google Docs Part 1 – The Setup

My Migration to Google Docs Part 2 – Google Docs on All The Toys

My Migration to Google Docs Part 3 – Between the Google Sheets

My Migration to Google Docs Part 4 – Sliding to Google Slides

We are currently in the Great Google Disruption of 2015.  Well, okay, that’s a bit of drama but there are several service from the company that are degraded.  The most notable is Google Drive where people are able to log in but they don’t see any files or folders.  Google Docs, Google Sheets and Google Slides are also impacted by the outage which started at 10:55 AM Pacific.  There is no word on what the issue is or when it will be resolved.

For those who want to keep up with such outages or other service impacting things from Google, there is a single site that is the place to go for information:  The App Status Dashboard.

Over the past several weeks I have been migrating my office productivity apps from Microsoft Office to Google Docs. This is part four of the four part series and will cover Google Slides, the presentation application of the Google Docs suite.

If you have not read the first three parts of the series, that may be a good place to start if you are interested in making a similar migration yourself. If you are only wanting to learn my thoughts & opinions on Google Sheets, this article will do it for you.

My Migration to Google Docs Part 1 – The Setup

My Migration to Google Docs Part 2 – Google Docs on All The Toys

My Migration to Google Docs Part 3 – Between the Google Sheets

With this final part of the series, I will be keeping the same format as I have on the other three parts:  Focusing on how Google Slides performs in Chrome, on a Chromebook and on Android devices.

As a reminder to everyone who is thinking of making this migration, a word of advice-meets-warning I posted as part of the first article.

Take your time.  You will find that the majority of features in Microsoft Office are in the Google apps but they will be in different places.  It may take you a few menu clicks to sort it out.  Be patient.  Give it a chance.  Sure it may turn out that it isn’t right for you and your needs but I would suggest trying the experiment over a week or two before you make a final verdict.  It isn’t as big a migration from say a PC to a Mac but it is similar to moving from Internet Explorer to Chrome in many ways.  Same thing, but bits in different places and this process or that process may be a little different.

Rome wasn’t built in a day and your migration to Google Docs won’t happen that fast either.  Patience is the word of the day.

The Google Docs team has started the new month with some great new features in the suite for those in education and in business.  The biggest change is a new research function which allows you to harness the power of Google search all from within the app.

Now we’re taking the first steps to incorporate the power and intelligence of Google into Docs. We hope to make analyzing your data more intuitive, editing more accessible and document styling more dynamic – now your documents can be as beautiful as your ideas are bold.

The biggest and boldest new feature is the Research function in the Google Docs apps for Android.  Now you can research information from within the app leveraging Google.  To do this you will need the latest builds of the Google Docs (build 1.4.352.09.34) and Google Sheets (1.4.352.09.34) which are now rolling out to the Google Play Store.  As with most updates like this, you could see this update in a matter of hours or a few days.