Tag Archives: Editors

Create custom headers and footers in Google Sheets

To create professional-looking spreadsheets, it’s often critical that you can append them with certain information—for instance, your company’s name, a confidentiality notice, and any other important details. With this launch, we’re making it easier to do just that. Going forward, you can customize the headers and footers in your Google Sheets documents with the text of your choosing. In addition, you can select from many more pre-defined options (for date, time, etc.) and move those options around within your header and footer. Simply choose “EDIT CUSTOM FIELDS” from the Print settings menu to get started.



As a bonus, we’re also introducing saved print settings with this launch. Just modify your settings once, and they’ll be retained the next time you—or a collaborator—opens that same spreadsheet.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to Rapid Release, with Scheduled Release coming in two weeks

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI


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Present like a pro: new updates in Slides designed to make you look good

(Cross-posted from The Keyword, with some additional details)

As a go-to presentation tool, Google Slides already comes equipped with real-time collaboration features. Starting today, we’re introducing new robust features to help you and your team win that pitch, nail that client presentation and get buy-in for new ideas—all while saving valuable time.

Here’s a look at the latest updates in Slides, including new G Suite integrations, partner applications and customization options.

Capture ideas in Keep, bring them to life in Slides
We built Keep to help you easily capture and organize ideas. Today, you can use a new drag-and-drop integration between Keep and Slides to transform these ideas into action. Simply select notes from Keep (or sort with #labels) and drag them into Slides. When you add a note from Keep into your presentation, Slides will automatically add a title and description for you.

The Office of Information Technology for the State of Colorado uses the new Keep and Slides integration to keep track of population numbers at different agencies and report them to their team. Instead of digging through emails and Docs to track down figures, the team saves statistics to Keep and drags them into Slides to present.

If you’re new to Keep, download here.

Skip manual updates, use linked Slides
Whether you’re trying to prepare several client presentations or make sure data is up to date, repeatedly copying slides from one presentation to another is a major time-sink. Now, you can link and sync slides from multiple presentations with a click. This way, you can maintain a single source of truth and easily update linked slides to match the source, like for quarterly business reviews or company presentations.


Sriram Iyer, Senior Director of Product Management at Salesforce Sales Cloud, is excited to use the new slide embedding feature to streamline his teams workflows. Says Iyer, “At Salesforce, we use Google Slides for customer-facing and internal presentations. The linked slides feature will help us easily keep presentations up-to-date.”

You asked, we updated
Our customers also asked for additional features in Slides. We listened to those requests and now you can:

  • Insert Diagrams, or ready-to-use visualizations. This is great for when you need to effectively share timelines, processes or hierarchies.
  • Select Grid view to view all your slides at once as thumbnails. This helps you easily reorder or change formats of multiple slides.
  • Tailor presentations to different audiences with the Skip slide feature. You can now choose to skip select slides without fully deleting then when you present from your phone or laptop.

Try these feature upgrades and create better presentations.

Try new add-ons, shape up your Slides
We’re constantly improving Slides to provide you with robust tools to share ideas. Today, we’re bringing add-ons to Slides. To kick it off, we’re introducing seven integrations—designed to bring expertise from companies like Adobe and Shutterstock—right in Slides.

Use these new, rich integrations to help you build more powerful presentations, whether you want to add full-bleed images, use advanced image editing tools or include diagrams you created in programs outside of G Suite.

Search for and add images from Adobe Stock, right in Slides.
You can use the Adobe Stock add-on to build visually-stunning presentations in Slides. Teams can seamlessly search, preview and purchase Adobe Stock images—without leaving Slides. Through the add-on, teams can also use Adobe Stock Visual Search to find relevant stock images with an uploaded image (versus a text search).

Use the Shutterstock Editor add-on to add and customize photos within Slides.
With the Shutterstock add-on, teams can browse Shutterstock’s entire library of royalty-free images, and sign into Shutterstock to license content, directly in Slides. Select an image, then apply customization options like filters, text, logos and more.

Teams can benefit from even more powerful capabilities in Slides with additional add-ons from Balsamiq, Lucidchart, Pear Deck, Noun Project and Unsplash. Tap “Add-ons” in the Slides menu bar to get started.

In addition, starting today, you can pair add-ons with templates in Slides—just like you can in Docs and Sheets. Keep in mind that add-ons will only work if they’re enabled for your domain, and templates paired with add-ons will abide by the same Admin console settings as all other templates. These templates will be available in English only.

Customize Slides, automate workflows with Apps Script
Apps Script, the same technology that powers add-ons, can transform the way you work. Apps Script for Slides lets your teams programmatically create and modify Slides, and customize the menus, dialog boxes and sidebars in the user interface.

So, what’s the big deal? Apps Script provides amazing possibilities for improving your team’s workflows. Sales teams can use Apps Script to automatically pull in information from Sheets’ databases to create customized client pitch decks and templates. Marketing teams can host internal assets in a customized sidebar in Slides for easy access to logos and files they use most often.

To learn more about how you can automate your workflows using Apps Script, check out this post.

Present with confidence using Slides.

NOTE: All of the features above are launching on the web only, with the exception of the Skip slide feature, which is available on Android and iOS devices as well.

Launch Details
Release track:
All web features launching to Rapid Release, with Scheduled Release coming in two weeks*; all mobile features launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release

*The Balsamiq template will appear immediately in the Slides template gallery, but the add-on functionality associated with it will launch only to domains on the Rapid Release track. Domains on the Scheduled Release track will see add-on functionality in two weeks.

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Use Google Keep in a document or presentation
Help Center: Link a chart, table, or slides to Google Docs or Slides
Help Center: Insert and arrange text, shapes, diagrams, and lines
Help Center: Add, delete, & organize slides
Help Center: Use add-ons & Apps Script
Help Center: Create a file from a template


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Search in the new Google Sites

Recently, we made it easier to surface content in the new Google Sites. Now we’re making it easier to find content on those sites. Going forward, users can simply click the magnifying glass in the top right corner of their screen and search across an entire site.


In addition, Google Cloud Search users will now see content from the new Google Sites in their Cloud Search results.


These improvements will allow Google Sites to better serve the needs of both site creators and viewers. Check out the Help Center for more details.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release

Editions:
Search bar in the new Google Sites

  • Available to all G Suite editions

New Google sites appear in Google Cloud Search results

  • Available to G Suite Business and Enterprise editions only

Rollout pace:
Search bar in the new Google Sites

  • Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility)

New Google sites appear in Google Cloud Search results

  • Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Preview and publish your site on the web


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Embed websites as iframes in the new Google Sites

We’ve heard you loud and clear—you want better ways to add content to the new Google Sites. Today, we’re making it easy. Going forward, you can embed an entire webpage as an iframe in a new Google site. This will allow you to pull in content from other websites and Google tools like Apps Script, Data Studio, and App Maker, saving you the trouble of duplicating and updating that information on your page. Simply select “Embed URL” from the Insert menu. Note that this will only work if the webpage you’re trying to add allows embedding.


Check out the Help Center for details, and stay tuned for more features coming soon.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to Rapid Release, with Scheduled Release coming in two weeks

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Preview and publish your site on the web

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Map your site to a custom URL in the new Google Sites

As a professional organization, it’s often important that you host both internal and external info at a well-known URL. Already supported in the classic Google Sites, this is now available in the new Google Sites as well. For more information on how to set up web address mapping in the Admin console, check out the Help Center.

Web address mapping settings in the Admin console

Users in domains with web address mapping set up will see a similar message when publishing sites

Important notes

  • For sites that are viewable within your organization only, the link is redirected to the Google Sites URL (such as http://sites.google.com/example.com/mysite).
  • New Sites address mappings automatically provision domain-validated SSL certificates for secure connections. You cannot use other certificates.
  • You may need to wait up to 24 hours to see your changes reflected. This feature is not available for trial domains.


Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
Admins and end users

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Change a site URL

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Get on the same page: new Google Docs features help power team collaboration

(Cross-posted from The Keyword, with some additional details)

Getting people on the same page for a project can be tough. It requires managing a ton of opinions and suggestions. The last thing you should have to worry about is making sure your team is literally working on the same document. That’s why we built our powerful real-time editing tools to help with this—Google Docs, Sheets and Slides—so that teams can work together at the same time, using the most up-to-date version.

Today, we're introducing new updates to better help with "version control," to customize tools for your workflows, and to help teams locate information when they need it.

Track changes, make progress

It can take dozens of edits to make a document just right—especially a legal agreement, project proposal or research paper. These new updates in Docs let you more easily track your team’s changes. Now, your team can:

1. Name versions of a Doc, Sheet or Slide on the web.
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 on the web 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.”

5. Compare documents and review redlines instantly with Litera Change-Pro or Workshare Add-ons in Docs. 


Here’s a quick way to preview and accept all changes (or reject them) and name versions of your document.


Use new templates, add-on time-saving functionality

Teams use templates in Docs and Sheets to save time on formatting. At the same time, developers are building add-ons to customize functionality. We thought, why not bring these two together? That’s why today, we’re introducing new templates with built-in add-ons and the ability to create your own, so your templates not only look good—but they make sure the work gets done.

These templates allow you to customize and deploy tools specific to your organization’s workflows. We’ve launched five examples of this in the general template gallery, like the new Mutual Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) template from LegalZoom and DocuSign. With this template, businesses can quickly create an NDA and collect signatures using the DocuSign Add-on for Docs. Bonus: it also automatically detects the required signature fields on the template, which saves even more time when you request signatures. This is just one of a few new templates—we’ve also worked with Lucidchart to create a business process manual, PandaDoc for a consulting agreement, Supermetrics for a website paid traffic report, and EasyBib for an MLA report. Each should help you save time and maximize efficiency throughout your team’s workflows.

In addition, you can create your very own template with built-in add-on customized to your company’s workflows. For example, create a Sheets template paired with an add-on to gather internal approvals or an invoice template in Docs (paired with an add-on) that pulls information from your CRM system.

Admins, if you don’t currently allow your users to install add-ons, you can still use these new templates by deploying specific add-ons only. Or, if you’d prefer to allow your users to install only certain add-ons, you can block specific third-party OAuth scopes and whitelist only those add-ons you trust.

Note that templates paired with add-ons abide by the same Admin console settings as all other templates and are available in English only.


The new Mutual NDA template from LegalZoom and DocuSign lets you collect NDA approvals stat.


Find the information you need, when you need it

Sometimes the hardest part of creating a proposal or client presentation is tracking down the information you need to include in it. Starting today for G Suite Business and Enterprise customers, Google Cloud Search will integrate with Docs and Slides via the Explore feature. Using Machine Intelligence, Cloud Search surfaces relevant information to help you work more efficiently throughout your day.

To get started, open the Explore tab in Docs or Slides and type what you’re looking for. Cloud Search will show you important details from your information across your G Suite apps including Gmail, Drive, Calendar, Sites and more, to help you create top-notch Docs and presentations.


Now you can use Google Cloud Search through the Explore feature in Docs and Slides.


Teams are using Docs to collaborate in creative ways. Check out this post for inspiration, or visit the Docs site to get started.

Launch Details
Release track:
  • Versions and Cloud Search in Explore
    • Launching to Rapid Release, with Scheduled Release coming in two weeks
  • Suggestions
    • Mobile features launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release
    • Web features launching to Rapid Release, with Scheduled Release coming in two weeks
  • Templates
    • Launching to Rapid Release, with Scheduled Release coming in two weeks*
*Templates created by our partners will appear immediately in all template galleries, but the add-on functionality associated with them will launch only to domains on the Rapid Release track. Domains on the Scheduled Release track will see add-on functionality in two weeks.

Editions:
  • Versions, Suggestions, and Templates
    • Available to all G Suite editions
  • Cloud Search in Explore
    • Available to G Suite Business and Enterprise editions with Cloud Search enabled only

Rollout pace:
  • Versions, Suggestions, and Templates
    • Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility)
  • Cloud Search in Explore
    • Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
  • Versions and Suggestions
    • All end users
  • Templates and Cloud Search in Explore
    • Admins and end users

Action:
  • Versions and Suggestions
    • Change management suggested/FYI
  • Templates and Cloud Search in Explore
    • Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information


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Smarter Google Forms to save you time

Google Forms makes it easy to collect information, plan events, solicit feedback, and more. Today, we’re adding new features and using machine learning to make Forms work better for your business. Read on for more details.

Intelligent response validation
When you know the specific type of answer you’re looking for, it’s often helpful to validate responses in Forms. For example, if you’re asking for a website, Forms can double-check that the answer provided is a URL. Following this launch, when we can, we’ll suggest response validation based on the question you ask. If you ask respondents for their age, for instance, we may recommend validating that the answer they provide is a whole number. (Note that this feature is rolling out gradually and may take several weeks to appear in your domain.)


Cross-domain file uploads
Oftentimes, when you use Forms, you’re not collecting data from your colleagues—you’re gathering information from third parties, customers, and more. To guarantee you get the information you need, we’ll now allow users outside of your domain to upload files as responses to your questions—provided both of your organizations allow cross-domain sharing in Google Drive. Based on usage patterns, total uploads to new forms will be capped at 1GB, with an option to increase that limit to 1TB. Uploads to existing forms will be capped at 1TB.

Preferences
If you use similar settings across all of your forms, you can now save time by assigning default settings to apply to any new forms you create. For instance, you can choose to always collect email addresses, make questions required every time, and assign default quiz point values.



“Checkbox grid” questions
Sometimes a question is more complex than multiple choice or checkbox answers alone can satisfy—you need to be able to select multiple options from multiple categories. Going forward, you can use the “Checkbox grid” question type to get the answers you need, like dates and times that work for an upcoming meeting.



Section reordering
We heard you loud and clear—you need an easy way to organize (and reorganize) your questions in Forms. In response to your feedback, we’re now making it possible to reorder whole sections quickly and easily.



Create better forms, more quickly, with these new and intelligent features in Forms.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to Rapid Release, with Scheduled Release coming in two weeks

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Edit your form
Help Center: Choose a question for your form

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Visualize data instantly with machine learning in Google Sheets

Sorting through rows and rows of data in a spreadsheet can be overwhelming. That’s why today, we’re rolling out new features in Sheets that make it even easier for you to visualize and share your data, and find insights your teams can act on.

Ask and you shall receive → Sheets can build charts for you

Explore in Sheets, powered by machine intelligence, helps teams gain insights from data, instantly. Simply ask questions—in words, not formulas—to quickly analyze your data. For example, you can ask “what is the distribution of products sold?” or “what are average sales on Sundays?” and Explore will help you find the answers.

Now, we’re using the same powerful technology in Explore to make visualizing data even more effortless. If you don’t see the chart you need, just ask. Instead of manually building charts, ask Explore to do it by typing in “histogram of 2017 customer ratings” or “bar chart for ice cream sales.” Less time spent building charts means more time acting on new insights.



Instantly sync your data from Sheets → Docs or Slides

Whether you’re preparing a client presentation or sharing sales forecasts, keeping data up-to-date can be time-consuming, especially if you need to update charts or tables in multiple sources. This is why we made it easier to programmatically update charts in Docs and Slides last year.

Now, we’re making it simple to keep tables updated, too. Just copy and paste data from Sheets to Docs or Slides and tap the “update” button to sync your data.



Even more Sheets updates

We’re constantly looking for ways to improve our customers’ experience in Sheets. Based on your feedback, we’re rolling out more updates today to help teams get work done faster:

  • Keyboard shortcuts: Change default shortcuts in your browser to the same spreadsheet shortcuts you’re already used to. For example, delete a row quickly by using “Ctrl+-.”
  • Upgraded printing experience: Preview Sheet data in today’s new print interface. Adjust margins, select scale and alignment options or repeat frozen rows and columns before you print your work.
  • Powerful new chart editing experience: Create and edit charts in a new, improved sidebar. Choose from custom colors in charts or add additional trendlines to model data. You can also create more chart types, like 3D charts. This is now also available for iPhones and iPads.
  • More spreadsheet functions: We added new functions to help you find insights, bringing the total function count in Sheets to more than 400. Try “SORTN,” a function unique to Sheets, which can show you the top three orders or best-performing months in a sales record spreadsheet. Sheets also supports statistical functions like “GAMMADIST,” “F.TEST” and “CHISQ.INV.RT.”
  • Increased support for charts in the Sheets API: Use the API to programmatically generate most charts with support for dozens of new operations.

These new features in Sheets are rolling out starting today. Learn how Sheets can help you find valuable insights.

One last thing—so that we can focus our efforts on the improvements to charts outlined above, we’re also deprecating one of the lesser-used chart types: the Motion chart. Beginning in July 2017, you will no longer be able to insert or create Motion charts, and, in September 2017, you will no longer be able to edit them.

No earlier than December 2017, any Motion charts still in Sheets will become static images and no longer update when their corresponding data changes.

We recommend trying Bubble charts instead.

Launch Details
Release track:

  • All mobile and API features launching to both Rapid release and Scheduled release on June 1st, 2017
  • All web features launching to Rapid release on June 1st, 2017, with Scheduled release coming on June 14th, 2017

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Add a chart or graph to a spreadsheet
Help Center: Chart types
Help Center: Add a chart or table to Google Docs or Slides



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Improving the publication experience in the new Google Sites

When you click “Publish” in the new Google Sites, you allow other people to view your site. If your organization allows you to publish sites on the web, you see options to (1) allow anyone at your domain or anyone on the web to visit your site, and (2) allow your site to appear in search results.


You’ve told us that the “Allow my site to appear in search results” setting is confusing, and that it’s not entirely clear how it impacts the availability of your site. With that feedback in mind, we’re making some changes to the setting. Following this launch,
  • if you’ve chosen to allow anyone on the web to visit your site, you’ll see an option to “Request public search engines not to index my site.” This option will not be selected by default, meaning that public search engines (like Google) will be able to index your site. This option will be labeled as a “Search setting” to distinguish it from the enforced permissions above it—by checking it, you indicate only your preference that search engines not index your site.
  • if you’ve chosen to restrict viewing of your site to your domain only, you will not see the “Request public search engines not to index my site” option, because no one outside of your domain will be able to visit your site anyway. Depending on your configuration, your site may appear in your organization’s internal search engine and on Google Cloud Search.

Please note that today’s launch will not impact the settings of any already-published sites, unless they’re unpublished and republished.


Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to Rapid release, with Schedule release coming on June 6th, 2017

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Preview and publish your site on the web

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Upcoming changes to chat in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides

Chatting in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides makes collaboration easier, as users can discuss a document while they work on it—without leaving the document itself. As many of you know, the current Docs Editors chat functionality is built on Google Talk, which we previously announced will be shutting down at the end of June.

We want to be sure you can continue to use chat in Docs, Sheets, and Slides, so—over the course of the next few weeks—we’ll make a few small changes and decouple the feature from Talk. As of June 7th, 2017, shortly before the Talk shutdown, organizations on the Rapid release track that have the Google Hangouts service enabled will have chat available in the Docs Editors; organizations on the Scheduled release track with Hangouts enabled will have chat in the Docs Editors starting on June 21st.*

If you currently have the Hangouts service enabled but Talk disabled, chat in Docs, Sheets, and Slides is not available to your users at this time. After June 7th or 21st (depending on your release track), however, your organization will begin to be able to use chat in the Docs Editors.* We encourage you to communicate the new feature to your users ahead of time. There will be no in-app promotion; users will simply see the chat button below appear in Docs, Sheets, and Slides when collaborators are in the document.


If a user clicks on that button, a chat window like the one below will appear on the right side of the screen, allowing him or her to chat with others in the document.


We’ll be making further improvements to chat in Docs, Sheets, and Slides in the future, so stay tuned for additional updates.

*IMPORTANT: Please see the Help Center for a list of exceptions.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to Rapid release on June 7th, with Scheduled release coming on June 21st

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
Admins and end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Chat with others in a file


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