5 Google Docs Updates You'll Love
Perhaps feeling the pressure from Microsoft's upcoming cloud-based Office Web, Google has finally made some much-needed improvements to Google Docs (which, to my thinking, has been stagnant for far too long).
So, what's different? Let's look past the boring, inevitable "faster and more responsive" claims to the changes that are actually worth getting excited about:
- Drawings Editor About a year ago, Docs introduced a tool for adding drawings and diagrams to your documents. Now that tool is a standalone module (accessible from the Create new menu) that supports real-time collaboration, meaning you and your co-workers can create and edit flow charts, diagrams, and other business graphics, all at the same time.
- New Spreadsheet features Finally, finally, the spreadsheets editor includes a formula bar for cell editing, cell auto-complete, and columns you can drag and drop. Google also promises "simpler navigation between sheets," though I couldn't find any evidence of that.
- Better document importing One of the bummers about pulling desktop documents into the cloud is that the formatting often gets screwed up. Docs now provides "higher-fidelity" document import -- meaning you're less likely to have to spend time fixing funky formatting.
- Sidebar comments As in Microsoft Office, Google Docs lets you insert comments by way of a sidebar. But Docs goes a step further with real-time chat, which is great for those times when you're collaborating on a document.
- New Document features Finally, finally, the documents editor includes tab stops, a ruler, and smarter image layouts: text now reflows around images easily and automatically.