Upload images in Google Spreadsheets

(Cross-posted to the Google Enterprise Blog)

We’re excited to announce that you can now upload images to Google spreadsheets. From the Insert menu, select Image... Then, choose an image file to upload into your spreadsheet.


With this feature, you can upload an image already stored on your computer, search for an image online, or add personal photos directly from one of your Picasa Web Albums.


Let us know what you think in the Google spreadsheets forum!

Posted by: Nick Santos, Staff Software Engineer

Google Sites brings you over 100 new web fonts

(Cross-posted to the Google Enterprise Blog)

Ever wanted to make your Google site feel even more unique? Today, we added a wide variety of Google Web Fonts to Google Sites, making it easier to style your website and make it look awesome.

Now you can go to Manage Site under More Actions and choose Color and Fonts in the left-hand navigation to choose fonts for the entire site in one go. The web fonts feature lets you select different sections of the site such as the entire page or just the title to selectively choose your styling. Additionally, we've given you control over font sizes for many of these sections.

Take a look at a site that uses multiple web fonts:

We’re looking forward to seeing the sites you create with these beautiful new fonts.

Posted by: Robert Dionne, Software Engineer

Introducing the new Google Docs app for Android

Increasingly, people are using mobile phones to access information -- from email to web browsing to editing documents. Part of getting work done on the go is being able to easily access, edit and share content, which is why we’re happy to announce the new Google Docs app for Android.

With this new app it’s easy to filter and search for your content across any Google account, then jump straight into editing docs using the online mobile editors. The app also allows you to easily share items with contacts on your phone, right from within the app.

The Docs app also allows you to upload content from your phone and open documents directly from Gmail. You can also add a widget to your home screen for easy access to three core tasks: jumping to your starred documents, taking a photo to upload, or creating a new document with one tap.


And my favorite feature: Using the app and your phone’s camera, you can turn photos with text into editable Google documents with the power of optical character recognition (OCR). Just create a new ‘Document from Photo' or select the camera icon from the widget, and your converted document will appear in your documents list shortly after you snap the picture. You can also convert photos already stored on your phone by sharing them with the Google Docs app. OCR does a pretty good job capturing unformatted text in English but won't recognize handwriting or some fonts - stay tuned, it will get better over time!


The Google Docs app is currently available in English and works on Android 2.1+ phones. Try it out by scanning the QR code below or by visiting Android Market.


Let us know what you think of the new Google Docs Android app in our forum.

Posted by: Reuben Kan, Software Engineer

Simpler file upload in Google Docs

Last November, we added the ability to drag and drop files from your desktop to the upload page, improving the ability to upload any file. Over the next few weeks, we’re releasing three additional features to make it easy to upload files to Docs: folder upload, documents list integration, and drag-and-drop upload.

To start, we’ve added folder upload via the new Upload menu in the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox and Safari.

You’ll need to install a small applet to use folder upload in Firefox and Safari. The existing folder structure is preserved on upload which means that folders within folders will also upload and become collections within collections.

Second, we’ve merged the upload page’s functionality into the documents list to create a much better upload experience. When you upload files via the new drop-down menu, a window will pop up in the bottom right of your documents list and show upload progress.


Once files are uploaded, they will appear in your documents list within seconds. You can also share them from the pop-up. Uploaded files go into the currently selected collection and have visibility set to private unless the collection is shared.

Upload settings have also moved. The first time you use the new upload method, you’ll see a pop-up asking you whether you want to convert files to the Google Docs format and if you want to convert images via Optical Character Recognition (OCR). You can always return to these settings via the drop down in the upload menu or the pop-up.


Lastly, if you are using Chrome, Safari and Firefox on your Mac or PC, you’ll also be able to drag-and-drop one or more files directly into your documents list to initiate an upload. You can even drop files directly into a collection on the left. Note due to browser limitations it isn’t possible to drag-and-drop folders directly into the documents list.


If you hit your storage limit, the upload will return an error and you’ll need to delete files or purchase additional storage for Google Docs for $0.02 per GB per month ($0.25 per GB per year). Please note that the new upload capabilities don’t support the ability to select a language when converting a document via OCR (Optical Character Recognition) or select visibility settings before upload. If you’d like to use these features, you can still use the older version of the upload page by choosing Basic... from the Upload menu.

We’ll be rolling this out to everyone with personal Google Accounts over the next month in all Google Docs languages. Rapid Release Google Apps users can expect to see the feature rolled out shortly thereafter. You’ll know when the features are available to you when you see a popup message at the top of your documents list.

If you have any additional questions about the upcoming changes to uploading files, check out our FAQ.

Posted by: Mike Procopio, Software Engineer

Update: This is now rolled out to everyone.

Google.com/Weddings Sweepstakes Winner

(Cross posted on the Google Photos Blog)

A little over three months ago, we announced Google.com/Weddings to help couples during the wedding planning process. Since launch, we’ve been overwhelmed by the positive feedback with over 700,000 visits. As part of that announcement, we partnered with Michelle Rago to not only help us with creative direction but also with hosting a wedding sweepstakes. The prize is $25,000 towards a dream wedding designed by Michelle. The sweepstakes ended on March 29th and today we’re pleased to announce that the randomly selected winning couple was Philong Nguyen and Nhu-Y Nguyen of Houston, Texas. Philong and Nhu-Y are currently using Google Docs to organize every facet of their wedding; Google Sites to build their wedding website, Picasa Web Albums to share photos with friends and Picnik to edit their photos. Philong had this to share about their engagement:

“We had already been looking at rings so I decided I wanted the time and place to be a complete surprise. Luckily she was working one weekend and had to go to work very early since she works in a hospital in the lab. I’m usually sleeping at that time, so I knew she wouldn’t expect to see me at 5 AM in the morning when she left for work. I woke up very early, brought dozens of roses that I had bought the day before and plucked, and created a trail of rose petals that led her from her door to the backyard where it ended in a heart with me waiting on the grass. Of course, the hardest part was waiting for her to open the door but when she did she followed the trail, found me and said Yes."

The couple will be working with Michelle Rago to design their September wedding. We can‘t wait to see the pictures. Congratulations to Philong and Nhu-Y!

Posted by: Peter Harbison, Product Marketing Manager

Pagination comes to Google Docs

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog and Google Enterprise Blog)

Exactly one year ago, we launched a new version of the Google document editor, created from the ground up to take advantage of the latest capabilities in modern web browsers like Chrome. In particular, we baked in a way of supporting text features that aren’t natively included with browsers—for example, we added a ruler for controlling the margins, text that wraps around images to create eye-catching docs and discussions for a more collaborative editing experience.

Today, we’re doing another first for web browsers by adding a classic word processing feature—pagination, the ability to see visual pages on your screen. We’re also using pagination and some of Chrome’s capabilities to improve how printing works in Google Docs. Pagination is rolling out now and should be available to everyone by the end of the day.


Pagination adds visual page breaks while you’re editing your documents, so now you can see how many pages of that report you’ve actually finished. Because we’re able to show you individual pages, we can improve the way other features work too: headers now show up at the top of each page instead of just at the top of your doc, manual page breaks actually move text onto a new page and footnotes appear at the bottom of the pages themselves.


If you prefer editing documents with a continuous layout, you can hide page breaks by selecting the “Compact” document view from the “View” menu.


Pagination also changes what’s possible with printing in modern browsers. We’ve worked closely with the Chrome team to implement a recent web standard so we can support a feature called native printing. Before, if you wanted to print your document we’d need to first convert it into a PDF, which you would then need to open and print yourself. With native printing, you can print directly from your browser and the printed document will always exactly match what you see on your screen.

For now, native printing is only available in Google Chrome, but we’re hoping other browsers will implement the same web standard so everyone can have the best possible printing experience with Docs.

Pagination and native printing are great examples of how modern browsers are making it possible to take the best parts of the desktop experience and bring them online. Please share your feedback on the Google Docs forum.

Posted by Luiz Pereira, Software Engineer

Improved printing in Spreadsheets

In January, we added support for Google Cloud Print to mobile documents. Today, we’re extending that functionality to mobile spreadsheets and adding some additional printing improvements to the desktop version of Google spreadsheets.

Mobile printing for spreadsheets
Now you can print your spreadsheets to any cloud-connected printer right from your phone by selecting Print... underneath the spreadsheet title. This feature will work on most phones and tablets that support HTML5, such as devices running Android 2.1+ and iOS 3+.


Improved desktop printing
We’ve added a number of printing options, including spreadsheet titles, sheet names and page numbers. You have control over which of these you want to print.

We hope you enjoy these improvements to printing.

Posted by: Jakov Krolo, Software Engineering Intern

Coming soon! Google Docs Motion BETA

From the beginning, Google Docs has been built with collaboration in mind. Everyone edits the same document and there’s no need to worry about attachments. While we’ve been very satisfied with Google Docs’ ability to facilitate collaboration between people working at different computers in different locations, we’ve always felt that there was a huge potential to push collaboration with Google Docs even further.

Today, we’re extremely excited to announce that Google Docs Motion ^BETA is in development and will be available later this year. Google Docs Motion will let you use your body to control Google Docs and will launch with a number of key features:

• Gesture recognition - over 10,000 supported gestures
  
• Emotion detection - writing tone corresponds with emotions
  
• In-depth tutorial - start being more productive in a few minutes

Work together on business proposals

Whether you are letting your creativity flow in drawings, creating a business proposal in documents, working on charts in spreadsheets or uploading files to the document list, Google Docs Motion increases collaboration and speeds up productivity. Ada Wong, Google Docs Motion Head Tester, has uncovered that there are incredible health benefits associated with using Motion. In her words, “It’s become an important part of keeping myself fit."


Check out our informational site to learn more about Google Docs Motion. If you’re itching to try out this technology today, Gmail Motion ^BETA is rolling out over the course of the day to everyone.

Posted by: Ronald Ho, Product Manager