New features with Gmail contacts and spreadsheets

Gmail Contacts
Gmail will now automatically adds people that you corresponded with to 'Suggested Contacts'. You can move people you correspond with regularly to 'My Contacts'. Gmail's address auto-complete feature will work for all of your contacts, whether they're in 'My Contacts' or 'Suggested Contacts'.

To ensure that only the right contacts are synced with your mobile device in the future, Gmail has moved previously auto-added contacts in 'My Contacts' back into 'Suggested Contacts'. Only contacts that you've moved to 'My Contacts', edited, imported or added to a group will remain in 'My Contacts' for syncing.

Full screen for Google spreadsheets
Google Spreadsheets now lets you view more of your work on-screen. Ctrl+Shift+F toggles between three modes: hide header, hide header and toolbar, and show all.

Google Spreadsheet has "New Menu"

As an avid user of Google Apps and Google Docs I have always wondered about when the Google spreadsheet will be more closer to the MS office Excel Spreadsheet in terms of its usability, navigation and features. For a detailed description of the new interface you can go to the already updated Google Docs help page.

Here are some key changes:


One step has been taken by launching the new 'Google Spreadsheets’ menu. Now, Google decided to reorganize the interface a bit and give it a real looking menu. The menu now gives you the standard menu format like - “File, Edit, Format, Insert, Tools, Form, Help,”.

These were the options I was accustomed to in almost much all Office suites. Menus neatly provide access to all commands and functions.








Updated Toolbar: The updated toolbar gives shortcuts to the most commonly-used commands, including one-click access to currency, percent, and other cell formats.

Formulas are now accessible from the toolbar (or, as always, by typing them directly into the cell).

Hover over the sort bar to expose sorting tools. Drag it by the handle on the left to freeze header rows so they are visible while you scroll.


In the Share menu you can invite people, see who has access, publish to the web, and find other advanced sharing features.

Chat with people who are editing at the same time, or just see who's there.







An additional (additional to the other spreadsheets) is the Form option which is now accessible from the standard menu.

So now no need to go to another page to create a form - you can create and edit form right from the standard menu.

I am loving it!

New features in Google Docs

Google is fast - shortly after the offline version of Google Docs (through Google Gears) they have continued with their fast development cycle and have launched some of the really good new features:

More sharing options in Docs list
Now you can both add and remove people's access and set advanced permissions from the Docs list (not implemented for spreadsheets). Check at Share tab in any document


Presentation speaker notes
You can now add speaker notes to your slides. These notes will be visible to you and your viewers in presentation mode or when you print your slides.

To include speaker notes, click the View Speaker Notes button at the bottom-right of a presentation while editing. This will bring the Speaker notes, where you can add and format notes for the current slide.

When in view presentation mode, you'll be able to view your notes by clicking the View speaker notes option at the top-right of your screen, directly above the chat module. Your collaborators and viewers will also be given the option to view your notes.

There are also options to print your speaker notes alongside your slides. Just click the File > Print menu item to access the print functionality, then click the checkbox to 'Include Speaker Notes' in your preferred layout.

You can export your notes to .ppt or .pdf as well; however, we don't support importing notes from .ppt at this time.

Insert videos into your presentations
In the Edit toolbar you'll see the new "Insert video" option which allows you to embed videos into your slides.


Save presentations as .ppt
Now you can save your presentations as PowerPoint files in addition to basic text and PDF.


Printing of documents
Choose File > Print to webpage to print your documents directly from the browser.
Print Settings - now a separate File menu option - only apply to regular printing (via PDF)

These are great features and will take Google Docs closer to MS Office (In fact some of the features are better than MS office)