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5 New Google Docs Features You Might Have Missed

Tim Lenahan — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 21:31:07 +0000

Google has managed to change the word processing game by giving us Google Docs. With Google Docs we can collaborate on such things as documents, spreadsheets and presentations. I’ve personally enjoyed the ability to share a spreadsheet with the secretary of the bus ministry in my church so we can both update the list of riders we visit and pick up. Google Docs makes stuff like that second nature.

Now Google is releasing new Google Docs features into the offering. There are some that are really worth checking out because they can make life easier and even expand the ways in which we use Google Docs. Follow me as I go through some of the new Google Docs features worth checking out. It just may be worth your while.

Upload Any File

We can now make use of Google Docs when we want to save, access and even share larger files that don’t even have anything to do with documents, spreadsheets or presentations.

Do you have a file you want access to someplace else but you don’t want to carry around a computer or disk? Upload it to your trusty Google Docs account and access it from anywhere!

In my testing I uploaded a few picture files (all under 1MB), an mp3 file (about 8MB) and a wav file (over 16MB) and I’ve had no problem uploading or accessing them.

Realize though that the 1GB of space you are given to keep Google Docs files in is the same space you are using for these other files. But hey, that’s enough for space you’re not paying for, right?

Bulk Upload

Google has awarded us with the ability to upload more than one file at a time. It works very similarly to normal file selection. You have several options. You can hold the Ctrl button and click on the individual files you want selected. You can hold the Shift button, click the first file and then click the last file to select all files in between. Then there is the option to click and drag, drawing a box selecting all files in the pathway of your mouse.

Google lets you upload all of the selected files in one batch. Very easy.

Shared Folders

Being able to share and collaborate on files is pretty cool, right? Well, once you begin sharing several files with the same people it may get a bit complicated. Now Google has rolled out the ability to share folders and collaborate on files in that folder. Cool idea Google. Who would have come up with an idea like that?

To implement the sharing of a folder, just right-click on a folder in your Google Docs account and you’ll see the share option. You have two methods of sharing the folder. You can invite people to collaborate by adding their email and sending them a message.

You can also set it so that anyone with a provided link can either view or edit it which you would then share with only the people you want to have access.

Email As An Attachment

While Google was rolling out sharing options, they chose also to allow for emailing files as attachments. Since you can now upload any type of file you want, it only makes sense that they allow you to send those files as email attachments if you need to. In fact, the feature gets even neater when you start sending Google Document files as email attachments and they are converted into usable offline file formats.

Sharing files via an email attachment is as easy as right clicking on the file to be shared, hovering over the “Share” option, and clicking “Email as attachment…“ If it is a Google Document, you are offered more choices as far as the file format goes.

Any way you look at it though, sharing files via email attachment can come in handy.

DOCX Import

In the past it was difficult to open and use a Word 2007 file if you didn’t have the right version of Microsoft Office. Since then many of the free word processing programs have become compatible. Now apparently Google Docs is compatible too. You can upload the files and convert them for editing from within Google Docs.

This can come in handy if someone ever felt the need to send me a document since I don’t use Microsoft’s suite nor do I intend to in the near future (call me a penny pincher).

Some of the features I have listed here are new Google Docs features that I think will make my own life easier. I must warn you that Google Docs, as awesome as the service is, has not quite “arrived” yet. You may run into some formatting difficulties when converting documents files back and forth. Just realize that Google Docs is free and the conveniences it offers may outweigh some of the difficulties. You must make the choice (see the poll about online versus desktop word processors).

So what do you think of some of the new features Google is rolling out for Google Docs? Which of them can you see yourself making use of?

How To Open, Edit and Print any Text Document File

Varun Kashyap — Sun, 10 May 2009 20:30:39 +0000

There are so many good software available these days – some free and some not free that you can use to create documents of all kinds. The downside? Each has its own format, some open formats and some not and you have to take care of which ones play well with which software.

Every now and then you would get a file that is not supported on your computer, there are couple of ways to tackle such a situation:

If you want to view and print the contents

If all you want to do is view the file and dont want to make any changes then look into TextMaker Viewer.

A 4MB download that allows you to view and print documents in a variety of different formats. Once you have it installed you can view almost all of the common document formats irrespective of the fact whether you have the requisite software installed or not.

TextMaker viewer allows you to open, view and print docx, sxw, dotx, rtf, doc, dot Microsoft Word templates, pwd, tmd, htm/html, odt and txt files.

On the other hand if most of your chores are related to Office 2007 file formats (i.e. docx) and if you have still not made the jump to Office 2007 you can use these Microsoft downloads to get those files working on Microsoft Office 2003, XP etc.

If you want to edit the contents

If you would like to work upon a file that is not supported by the software you have installed, you have to go for file conversion and hope that everything turns out the way you wanted.

If you are going for conversion there are some pretty handy online resources that you should keep in mind. Cometdocs and Convertfiles are excellent for such purposes. You can mostly convert all the common document file formats using these two sites.

Zamzar is another very popular site for similar purposes. Besides documents it also does video, audio and text to speech, so you might want to check it out for your other conversion needs as well.

Online resources generally have a file size limit and you might have to wait in some cases, if you are looking for a solution that is “closer” to home you might want to check out the “Save As” feature of your software. Generally there are plenty of formats available that you can choose from so that your recepient is able to use your file. OpenOffice as an example is able to read doc, docx, pdf besides the native formats, so if you happen to be using OpenOffice you can always open a file and save it in the desired format.

3 Microsoft Word Plugins To Boost Your MS Word Experience

Simon Slangen — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 17:01:02 +0000

Although there are many great open source office suites, Microsoft Word remains my number one choice. It belongs to the elite few applications I’m willing to pay for in the big world of software.

However, nothing is perfect. And although imperfections create the uniqueness and beauty in most cases, we want software to be as close as it can get.

This is the main reason why plug-ins were created; one might say to pimp out your applications to fit your preference. Ask any three Firefox users why they use the browser, and I guarantee that you’ll hear the word ‘add-on’ more than once.

However, Firefox add-ons have been discussed multiple times over, but I was stunned to see nearly no one took on the job of looking into Microsoft Word Plugins. We even covered Open Office extensions, but never looked at free Plugins for Microsoft Word.

Save as PDF or XPS in Office 2007

Converting documents from and to PDF is a matter that keeps a lot of tongues occupied. But why all that hassle of converting if you can just save your document to PDF out of Word?

Microsoft released Save as PDF or XPS, a free add-in which adds the PDF format under the save-as menu, together with XPS (Microsoft’s own PDF-like format), and works quicker than many premium solutions I’ve tried before (including the official Acrobat one).

You can also send your documents over the internet in an email, in PDF or XPS format, with a few clicks of the mouse.

The Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS add-on works with the following Office 2007 applications:

Word 2007
Access 2007
Excel 2007
InfoPath 2007
OneNote 2007
PowerPoint 2007
Publisher 2007
Visio 2007

The plugin can be downloaded here.

Open and save Docx files in Office 2003

One of the biggest bothers that came with the splendid looking Office 2007, was a new file format – the only bother, if I might say.

OK, I get it. It’s smaller in size, stores additional style types, and so on – honestly, if I could just open it in previous word versions, I’d love it.

I’ve always worked around this problem by either saving it in doc format myself, or by converting it if I was using a non-2007 computer. It wasn’t long ago that I discovered the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats. We have already looked at different ways to view docx files.

This download makes all the applications in your 2003 suite compatible with their Office 2007 companions. When installed, you can not only open, but also save docx files.

The plugin can be downloaded here.

Open ODF (OpenOffice) Files In Word

A friend once asked me to print out a document for her. With her liking freeware, she sent me an odf file.

For those of you that are unfamiliar with it, odf is the standard format for OpenOffice documents, an open-source Office alternative.

Luckily for you and me, Sun Microsystems (the guys we know from Java) developed an Office plug-in. It’s compatible with both Office 2000, 2003 and 2007, and it allows the user to open, edit and save in the odf format.

The plugin can be downloaded here.

Do you know of any other Microsoft Word plugins? If so, let us know in the comments.