Just to clarify...

Yesterday, a researcher publicly reported some concerns with Google Docs. At Google, we treat the privacy and integrity of our users' data with the highest priority. We quickly investigated, and we believe that these concerns do not pose a significant security risk to our users. If you want the details, read on...

The first concern that the researcher raised is that an image embedded in a document is not deleted when a document is deleted. Images are maintained because removing them would break image references in users' other Google documents and external blogs. In addition, image URLs are known only to users who have at some point had access to the document the image is embedded in, and could therefore have saved the image anyway (which is fully expected). You can always contact support to purge images from your account.

The second concern that the researcher raised is that viewers may be able to see revisions of drawings that are included in a document, using the new "Insert Drawing" feature. The ability for document collaborators to view revision history is a feature built into Docs. The ability to view past versions of the drawings is limited to authorized persons who have been given explicit access to the document with the embedded drawing. We may consider explicitly preventing viewers from accessing drawing revisions. For now, if document owners decide they don't want viewers to have access to their revisions, they can simply make a new copy of the document (from the File menu) and share that new version. The revision history of both the document and all embedded drawings is removed in copies of documents.

The final concern that the researcher raised is that users removed from documents can, in a specific case, regain access to them. The specific case is related to the use of a feature which allows document invitations to be forwarded to more than one person. That feature was provided in response to user requests for "invitation forwarding" and sharing documents with email lists. Invitations sent using this feature contain a special key on the document link. This feature can be disabled at any time to expire previously distributed invitations which contain that special key. To do this, simply disable this feature by unchecking it (in documents and presentations, it's called "invitations may be used by anyone" and in spreadsheets it's "editors can share this item").

We have begun adding more documentation in the Help Center here and here to describe in more detail the functions related to each concern. We are also exploring alternative design options that might further address the concerns.
We'd like to thank the researcher for sharing his concerns with us. We always welcome your feedback on our products, and thank you for your continued support.

[Update 3/28/09: I failed to mention the researcher's name in the original post. His name is Ade Barkah]

Posted by: Jonathan Rochelle, Product Manager, Google Docs

Drawing on your creativity in Docs

I'm excited to tell you about Insert Drawing, a new feature we've added to Google Docs. Now you can create and insert rich, colorful drawings into documents, presentations and spreadsheets, to illustrate your ideas or just for fun.

It's easy to create drawings using lines, free hand scribbles, text labels and a large choice of shapes that you can move, resize, rotate and adjust. Group, order, align and distribute and other features are available when you select objects you've drawn. You can also customize a range of shape properties, from line widths to fill color, and from arrowheads to font size, and much more. If you change your mind, there is undo and redo. You can collaborate with a friend or colleague on a drawing, or work alone, just as you can in Google Docs today.

The team and technology behind Insert Drawing originally came from the startup Tonic Systems, which Google acquired in 2007. The drawing feature that we've built relies heavily on a relatively new capability in browsers: the ability to render vector graphics. We use the SVG (scalable vector graphics) standard to accomplish this in most browsers and VML (vector markup language) where SVG is not available. Only recently has the performance and ubiquity of such technology enabled us to deliver what we hope is a delightful feature. As browsers continue to improve, we can deliver more and more useful cloud-based functionality.

As with any new feature, we'll be adding new capabilities over time. But even though we have our own to-do list, we'd love to hear about how you think we could improve drawings. You'll find Drawing within the Insert menu, so try it out and tell us what you think in our Help Forum.

Posted by: Tony Glenning, Drawings Team Lead

Find (and replace) my favo(u)rite colo(u)r and much, much more

I'm Canadian. And although I've lived and worked here in the U.S. quite some time now, the Canadian spellings of certain words still often slip into my documents. Favourite, colour, neighbour, centre, etc. -- you get the idea. This week, we've added a new find and replace toolbar (for documents) which will make it easier for me to catch those Canadian spellings when I'm writing for an American audience.

If you want to locate a word or phrase in your document, it's as easy as choosing "Find & Replace" in the "Edit" menu, or hitting Ctrl+F.

Then type the text you want to find, and click Find Next (or press Ctrl+G). If it appears more than once in your document, you can click Find Next again to select the next occurrence.

If you want to change some or all of the occurrences in your document, just type the replacement text in the second box. Click the Replace button to change a selected occurrence to the replacement text, or click Replace All to change all the occurrences in your document in one shot.

Find and Replace also supports additional options for controlling the search, which you can see by clicking the arrow next to the search box. Options such as case-sensitive matching and regular expressions. Find out more about this feature in this help center article.

Pretty useful tool, eh?

Posted by: Vivian Leung, Product Marketing Manager (and proud Canuck)

Custom views give you more control of your spreadsheets

A few weeks ago we enhanced mobile access to spreadsheets by adding the ability to add, edit, sort, and filter rows. Today, I'm happy to announce that this same list view is now available when you're working on spreadsheets from desktop and notebook computers. You can find list view under the View menu.
List view provides a simplified interface to your spreadsheet. Here's an example of a spreadsheet that could be used by employees that are staffing a trade show booth:


Notice that you can quickly sort and filter data in list view without changing the underlying spreadsheet. Each sort and filter view has a unique web address (URL), making it easy to return to a particular view to inspect and analyze your data. You can share list view URLs with your colleagues, provided they have permission to access the spreadsheet. Below, I've filtered the spreadsheet to see who requested "Large" t-shirts on "Tuesday":

List view can also be embedded in a web page, either in read-only or editable mode. Here I've embedded a view of the example spreadsheet right into this blog post:



Here are a few more ways to use list view:

• Imagine that you collected 100 names and t-shirt sizes using a Google Docs form. You might share a list view of the form responses, allowing people to fix errors (such as someone entering the wrong size) without worrying about a novice user accidentally messing up other parts of the spreadsheet.
• Rather than embedding a published snapshot of a spreadsheet in your Google Sites page, you can now embed a read-only list view of the spreadsheet, which allows users to easily sort, filter and page through the data.

List view also loads very quickly in your browser, making it especially useful when you just want to quickly give others basic editing access rather than the full functionality normally available. And if you're using list view and need full spreadsheet functionality, just follow the "Go to spreadsheet view" link.

Posted by: Eric Bogs, User Interface Software Engineer

New Template: 2009 College Basketball Tournament Bracket

The first round of the 2009 NCAA Division I men's college basketball tournament starts tomorrow. For many of us in the U.S., it's a time when we root for our favorite college teams and engage in some friendly competition with co-workers and college buddies to see who's going to win the National Championship in Detroit.



In preparation for this year's tournament, I used my 20% project time to create the tournament bracket template above, all within a Google Docs spreadsheet. To make this spreadsheet work, I created a GoogleTournament function that lets you look up a plethora of information about the NCAA tournament including team names, records, seeds, scores, game times and even the location of a game. Every time you check out the spreadsheet (and if you're like most college basketball fans - multiple times each day) you'll see the latest results.

Since you can add collaborators to your spreadsheet, it's easy to engage in some friendly rivalry (i.e. trash talk) right within the spreadsheet. The template includes 10 blank brackets that each of your friends can fill out. No need to print out and fill-in blank paper brackets. There's one sheet that shows whose picks are the best.

If you are brave enough to share your picks with the world, you can publish your sheet or the entire spreadsheet. When you're in a fan forum discussing the tournament, you can just refer to the published spreadsheet to show off your picks.

Not satisfied with my basic spreadsheet? Create your own using the GoogleTournament function.

Posted by: John Danaher, Software Engineer

On yesterday's email

Yesterday we contacted some of our users to let them know about an issue that affected their Google Docs accounts. We believe the issue affected less than 0.05% of all documents, but, in the interest of transparency, we wanted to share the details more broadly.

As we noted in the Google Docs Help Forum yesterday, we've identified and fixed a bug where a very small percentage of users shared some of their documents inadvertently. The inadvertent sharing was limited to people with whom the document owner, or a collaborator with sharing rights, had previously shared a document. The issue affected so few users because it only could have occurred for a very small percentage of documents, and for those documents only when a specific sequence of user actions took place.

For this small percentage of documents, the bug (now fixed) occurred when the document owner, or a collaborator with sharing rights, selected multiple documents and presentations from the documents list and then changed the sharing permissions. The bug did not affect spreadsheets.

As part of the fix, we used an automated process to remove collaborators and viewers from the documents that we identified as having been affected. We then emailed the document owners to point them to their affected documents in case they need to re-share them.

We're sorry for the trouble this has caused. We understand our users' concerns (in fact, we were affected by this bug ourselves) and we're treating this very seriously. We hope this explanation provides greater clarity.

Posted by: Jennifer Mazzon, Google Docs Product Manager

Which is faster, warp or hyperdrive?

More and more people have started using forms to collect information from their co-workers and customers. To contrast these more "practical" uses, I thought that I'd share three fun surveys that you can send to your friends: one for Star Wars and Star Trek fans, another that lets you find out what your friends think about you, and one with 18 totally random questions (just because).

After your friends submit their answers, you'll be able to see nifty summary charts like the one above. According to my friends, hyperdrive is faster than warp. Would your friends agree?

For those of you who haven't used forms before, here's how to get started:

1. Preview the three surveys below and choose one.
   
2. Customize the survey with a personal message and even add your own questions and answers.
   
3. Email the survey to your friends.
   
4. Sit back and watch as the results come in.
   

By default, your friends will be able to see each others' responses as well, but you can change this setting before sending out the survey if you'd like.

For those of you that would like to create a form from scratch, you can go to your Docs List and click New > Form.

Have fun with these forms.

Posted by: Andrew Chang, Marketing Manager

Update: Several people have mentioned that they're enjoying the lively discussion (and sometimes debate) after filling out the survey. A common question has been, "How do I share the results with my friends?" An easy way to do this is to change the sharing options for the spreadsheet that holds the survey results. You can add your friends (using their email addresses) as viewers of the underlying spreadsheet and email them a link to the spreadsheet.

New Templates: Embedding spreadsheets in your website

Did you know that you can publish a spreadsheet and embed it in your website or blog? An embedded spreadsheet is a perfect way to display an event calendar, team checklist, or your favorite list of things. Publishing a spreadsheet is really flexible. You can choose which parts of the spreadsheet to share with the world: all sheets, certain sheets, even a range of cells. Any changes you (and other collaborators) make to the spreadsheet will be visible to your website visitors.

To make this easier, we've recently added five spreadsheet templates to the templates gallery that have been formatted nicely for websites. Special thanks goes to Jon Wittwer of Vertex42.com for creating these templates:

1. Embedded Schedule



2. Embedded Calendar



3. Reading List



4. Countdown Timer



5. Quote of the Day




Each template has a link to instructions for how to publish and embed the spreadsheet. For more ideas on how to embed spreadsheets, see Jon's list of over 20 ideas for embedded spreadsheets.

Posted by: Andrew Chang, Marketing Manager