Tag: 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.

The Google G Suite team has announced that effective September 13th of this year, the web clipboard in the suite of apps will no longer be available.  The feature, according to the G Suite team, is rarely used as the ability to copy and paste across browser windows has improved over the years.  The feature was originally designed for when this was more challenging.

As these issues have become less prevalent across many browsers, we’re looking to simplify the user experience by removing the web clipboard, which is rarely used, on September 13th, 2017.

The post goes on to way that the team is working continue to improve the copy and paste feature within the web-based versions of the apps.

The Google Drive team is rolling out an update to the web that allows you to preview password protected Microsoft Office documents.  The update is rolling out to everyone and should get to your account over the course of the next few days.  Once you have it, if you attempt to open a password protected file, you will be prompted for the password and can then preview the file.  The key word here is preview.  You won’t be able to edit the document nor will you be able to open it up in Google Docs, Sheets or Slides.  It is a read-only preview.

While it is limited, this is a nice edition to Google Drive.  Many users store Microsoft files on Drive so being able to at least preview a document before going through the process of opening it up in the apps could potentially save some time.  Interestingly, the ability to open or preview password protected files is something that even Microsoft does not offer with Office 365 online.

Users of Google Docs, Sheets and Slides on Android will find minor updates rolling out for each of the productivity apps.  For the most part, these updates are bug fixes and performance improvements but in the case of Google Docs and Google Slides, there are new features in each.  For Docs, you now have the ability to add page numbers to a document from the app.  You have been able to do this in Docs on the web for a long time but it has finally made its way to the Android app for the sake of feature parity.

For Google Slides, the ability to import and export OpenDocument formatted files (.odp) has been added to the presentation app.

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.