Faces of Docs: Vance Vagell, User Interface Software Engineer

One of my favorite things about being the community manager on the Google Docs team is working alongside people with a myriad of backgrounds, interests, and talents. From learning of one of teammate’s pro cricket player past or another’s literary aspirations, I’m constantly discovering new things about the people I spend my workdays with. I thought you might enjoy reading about them, too--which is why we’re taking a cue from our friends at Gmail to bring you “Faces of Docs,” a series that will spotlight the people that make up our team.

Photo by: Antonella Pavese

Name:
Vance Vagell

What do you do on the Docs team and how long have you been at Google?
I lead a team of user experience (UX) prototypers. We build realistic-looking prototypes of new Google Docs features, so that our researchers can try them out with people. This lets us improve them before our engineers build the real thing. I’ve been here two years, but things move so quickly it may as well be 10.

What’s your typical day like?
I hop on the subway, read a few chapters of whatever sci-fi novel I’m working through (currently “Olympos” by Dan Simmons), and get to the office in about an hour.

Grab a coffee, then try to tackle my email inbox. Afterwards, I’m usually doing one of three things: building a prototype, preparing for a study, or running brainstorm and design sessions. My mind is usually at least one year in the future, although sometimes people force me to think about near-term problems.

What do you like most about what you do?
Watching someone enjoy a feature I’ve helped revise a few timesâ€"once we’ve finally gotten it right. I like being an advocate for what’s truly useful, and what people need. On the other hand, occasionally I get to work on bigger changes that help push technology in new directions, and that’s a blast too.

What’s the most challenging part of your role?
There are so many teams that want to see their ideas prototyped, that sometimes I have to put a few on the backburner. That said, we always prioritize, and then squeeze in a few “blue sky” projects so we keep moving forward and never get stuck in the status quo. We call a project “blue sky” when it’s unrealistic by today’s standards, but could be a great direction tomorrow.

What did you do before joining Google?
I’ve always worked in NYCâ€"love the east coast (as I alienate myself from my west coast colleagues with this post). Started out as an indie game developer, then worked in voice technology for a few years. I was delighted to discover a posting for “User Interface Software Engineer” at Google NYC, and haven’t looked back since. I focus more on UX than engineering these days, but there’s an important intersection between the two that I represent.

What are the three Docs features you wouldn’t be able to live without?
Can I list ones that haven’t launched yet? Probably not. Okay, in that case: @-mentions in document comments that shoot off emails to people, Google Forms to quickly gather feedback, and real-time editing to bang out ideas as a group. These are all critical to my daily work.

What do you do when you’re not working on Docs?
Far too much computer gaming. Some of my favorites: Everquest (original and EQ2), Planetside, Eve Online, and City of Heroes.

Also love to go bird-watching. My favorite spot is Central Park. People are often surprised that you can spot over 20 bird species in a single afternoon there with a pair of binoculars. Did you know there’s a family of red-tailed hawks in the park that has reared several seasons of chicks now? Google “Pale Male”. On one outing, one of those hawks dove not more than a foot above my head to pick up a mouse beneath a tree across from me. Promptly carried it to a nearby branch and … dined. Very cool experience.

What kind of desk flair do you have?
Souvenirs from aquariums and zoos I’ve visited, and a photobooth print out of me and my partner at one of the Google NYC holiday parties. At last year’s, they had caricature artists, but I’m not ready to share that particular image of me yet. :)

What’s your pet peeve?
Apathy. Be passionate about something, and don’t be afraid to stand up for it.

What do you do in your downtime?
Between projects I like to catch up on UX blogs and papers. Some of my favorites are UX Matters, Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, and Don Norman’s essays.

What would your last meal be?
Definitely my partner Ray’s vegetable curry, it’s sublime, and you can’t beat home-cooked!

Posted by: Teresa Wu, Community Manager

A fresh start for Google presentations

A year and a half ago, we released completely new document, spreadsheet and drawing editors. Google Docs has been picking up speed ever since with more than 60 new features and millions of new users. Today we’re rounding out the suite by previewing a new version of presentations with faster collaboration and more features.

A collaborative approach
Presentations are made to be sharedâ€"whether it’s presenting your thesis to your professors or inspiring colleagues at a conference. And the best presentations are made together, collaborating with others to build a compelling story that captivates your audience. Creating presentations together is easy because you can:

• See exactly what others are working on with colorful presence markers
• Edit with your team members simultaneously from different locations
• Use revision history to see who made changes or to revert to earlier versions
• Say hello, start a conversation or share new ideas using built-in chat

More than 50 new features
In the new presentations, we’ve added many of your most requested features, including:

• Transitions to move between slides with simple fades or spicier 3D effects
• Animations to add emphasis or to make your slides more playful
• New themes to create beautiful presentations with distinct visual styles
• Drawings to build new designs, layouts, and flowcharts within a presentation
• Rich tables with merged cells and more options for adding style to your data

What’s next
We’re gradually rolling out the new presentations. To get an early start, click on the gear icon in your document list, and select Document settings. Then, from the editing tab, check the box to “Create new presentations using the latest version of the presentation editor.”

Many of the new features were built using technologies that are only available in modern browsers. If you’re using an older browser you’ll be able to view, but not edit, the new presentations.

With today’s launch, the Google Docs suite is now built on a single, solid foundation. Now that the groundwork is in place, you can expect more useful and collaborative features, delivered faster than ever before.

Posted by: Steven Saviano, Software Engineer

Faces of Gmail: Brandon Long

Posted by Kathleen Chen, Consumer Operations

In this month’s Faces of Gmail we’ll introduce you to Brandon Long, a parent, ice-hockey player and science fiction fan who makes sure your emails get sent and received.

What do you do on the Gmail team?
I’m the Tech Lead Manager of the Gmail delivery team. Our team is responsible for sending and receiving email for Gmail and many other Google projects. We’re also responsible for the IMAP & POP support for Gmail, which is the most popular way to access Gmail on mobile devices.



What did you do before joining Google?
I founded Neotonic Software which wrote a web application for email customer support. Before that, I worked at eGroups, which was acquired by Yahoo! and is now Yahoo!Groups.

What’s your typical day like?
My typical day involves catching up on email from our teams in other timezones (Google Engineering never sleeps). I also stay on top of escalations from our support team, keep abreast of the running service with our SREs (Site Reliability Engineers), and make sure my team doesn’t have any blockages. Finally, I still manage to keep my hands in the codebase, working as part of the team. When I have some extra time, I take a peek in the Gmail help forum to see if there’s anything brewing or any help I can offer.

What do you like most about what you do?
Scale and ubiquity. Everyone knows about Gmail, many people I know use it. The volume of messages we deal with on a daily basis is pretty staggering, and it’s pretty complicated to keep the whole thing working and continuing to scale.

What are the three Gmail features you wouldn’t be able to live without?
SMTP, IMAP, and keyboard shortcuts. I get thousands of messages a day to my work account, and keyboard shortcuts make all of the difference in handling the volume.



What’s your favorite lab?
Green Robot. I’m an Android fan, and I like to see which of my friends are fans as well.

What do you do when you’re not working on Gmail?
I’m a father of two young children, and I play ice hockey in the local beer league.

Any favorite TV shows?
Burn Notice, The Daily Show, Top Chef, Top Gear

What’s on your reading list?
Switching to the Kindle for reading has allowed me to subscribe to magazines I gave up reading a long time ago. For example, after 15 years I’m back to reading Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine. I find it very convenient to read the short stories during my commute.

What would your last meal be?
Does one go with comfort food or with amazing? For comfort, nothing beats Chicago-style Pizza. In SF, that means Patxi’s. In Chicago, that means Lou Malnati’s or Gino’s East. For amazing, I’m not a foodie myself, but I have enough foodie friends to have been introduced to some meals both amazing and ridiculous. And besides, if it’s going to be my last meal, why not a 25 course gastronomic event taking six hours or more? The last place we tried was e by José Andrés, and it was fabulous.

Photos by Cody Bratt, Google Talk team

Tips & Tricks: Using the new Subtotal function in Google spreadsheets

This week, we added the Subtotal function to our list of functions in Google spreadsheets. One of the benefits of the Subtotal function is that it works well with AutoFilters by only using unfiltered data when performing calculations (other functions such as Sum include filtered data calculations). Subtotal also lets you change what function you’re performing on those values very quickly, by selecting an item from a drop-down list. See our help article for details.

This versatile function is often used by accountants, finance professionals, and business consultants. It can also be extremely convenient for any user -- let’s show you why.

Say that you’re helping to plan your family’s annual Labor Day beach weekend. You want to decide how many hot dogs and veggie dogs to buy. To figure this out, you create a Google spreadsheet that includes all your family members, their meat preferences, and the number of hot dogs everyone ate at the past several family gatherings:

To quickly count how many veggie dogs you need to buy based off the number of veggie dogs eaten last month, add a filter to the columns , sort to “Yes” only in Column C, and type in this Subtotal function underneath the table:

=SUBTOTAL(109, F2:F14)

Cells F2 through F14 show the number of hot dogs each family member ate last month. “109” is the code that references the Sum function (“9” would also work). Typing in a regular Sum function in this case (=SUM(F2:F14)) would have added all dogs, veggie or not, whereas Subtotal ignores hodogs which have been filtered.

Another neat feature of the Subtotal function is that the function code (such as “109” above) can easily be changed to refer to different operations like Average, Minimum, and Maximum. As a result, Subtotal can be used to condense a number of calculations into a small space.

Let’s say you want to see not only the total number of hot dogs eaten each summer month, but also the average number eaten. Rather than creating two different functions (Sum and Average) for each month, you can use Subtotal.

• In an open cell -- let’s use B15 -- you would create a drop-down list with the codes for the Sum and Average function (109 and 101 respectively).
• And under the column for each month, you would write a Subtotal function, but reference cell B15 instead of typing in a code.

For June, therefore, your function would read: =SUBTOTAL(B15, D2:D14)

Every time you change which code appears in cell B15 through the drop-down, the values under each month will change, showing either the total or the average number of hot dogs eaten by your family with just one click.


We hope the Subtotal function makes your data analysis a lot easier -- and maybe even more fun.

Posted by: Lai Kwan Wong, Software Engineer

Try out a new look and keyboard shortcuts for your documents list

As part of our effort to provide an improved and consistent web experience across Google products, we’d like to invite you to try out a new look for the documents list that's rolling out to users over the next few days. If it's available to you, you'll be able to preview the new look by clicking on Try the new look under the gear icon in the upper right. You’ll be able to return to the classic look using the same menu.

Classic look

New look

While using the new interface, you may want to see more of the items in your documents list on the screen at one time. To do this, click on the gear icon in the upper right and go to Documents settings. Under Row height, you’ll be able to select the option to use a denser view.

As part of this new look, we’ve also added keyboard shortcuts to help you easily navigate your documents list without a mouse. For example, when selecting a document, use the â‡" (down arrow) to move down the list and the â‡'(up arrow) to move back up. Once you find the item you're looking for, type a to open the Actions menu. Then, use the â‡' and â‡" arrow keys to navigate the Actions menu, and hit to select an action.

The Create new shortcuts are also convenient for creating new docs while you’re working. Simply hit Shift + T to create a new text document, Shift + S to create a spreadsheet, or Shift + C to create a new collection.

Can't remember all those shortcuts? Just remember the question mark. Type ? when you’re not in the search bar, and a window will appear showing all available shortcuts.


These shortcuts will only be available if you’re using the new interface. Keep an eye out for more changes to the new interface as it evolves, and make sure to tell us what you think about the new design in this brief feedback form so we can continue to improve your experience.

Posted by: Ted Chen, Software Engineer

How I use Google Docs as a student

Shep McAllister is a rising senior at Trinity University in San Antonio, TX, and editor of the popular student blog HackCollege. For the past several years, he has done his college coursework exclusively on Google Docs, and today he shares his five favorite uses for the platform in the classroom.

When I started out at Trinity University, I didn’t know much about Google Docs and relied heavily on desktop word processors. As I became increasingly frustrated with these programs crashing mid-sentence, I thought I’d give Google Docs a try. But what started as an experiment to test Google Docs for group projects and class notes quickly became a permanent solution for all of my schoolwork, and I haven’t looked back once. Here are a few of my favorite uses of Google Docs in college:

1. Work together on group projects
Before I started using Google Docs, group projects were a nightmare. A co-authored paper would fragment into a dozen different documents. Group presentations became last minute scrambles to get combine slides. Any information sharing about our project took place in splintered email threads. With Google Docs, my class groups are able work together on the same presentation or paper simultaneously while sharing links and ideas in a separate doc. The discussions feature released earlier this year made collaboration even simpler.

2. Take notes collaboratively
My classmates and I always get together near exam time to combine our notes and share ideas, so why not do it in real time? I work with friends to take in-class notes on a single Google doc, allowing everyone to come away with a more thorough set of notes than they could have written individually. I discuss this concept in more detail on my blog, HackCollege.

3. Convert PDFs and handouts to searchable text with Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
As a student, I get a lot of assigned reading as PDF files. Unfortunately, most of them are low-quality scans from the library, which makes it hard to search through them for keywords or make annotations. With Google Docs’ OCR capabilities, I’m able to upload a low-quality PDF and receive an editable text document in return. This also works well for any important handouts professors give out in class -- I just scan the handout and upload to Google Docs, keeping all of my class material in one place.

4. Save major assignments in the cloud
Writing important papers in Google Docs allows me to access my assignments and papers from any computer, anywhere. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been stuck in the library without my laptop, or only have my smartphone handy. With Google Docs, it doesn’t matter, because all of my assignments are stored in the cloud, meaning I don’t have to be tethered to my laptop to get work done. This saved my sanity (and GPA) during finals last semester, when my computer crashed and was out of commission for over a week. Luckily, there was no need to panic, because I knew my final papers and study guides were tucked safely in the Google Docs cloud, instead of my dying hard drive.

5. Collect information from a group with forms
Before I started using Google Docs, organizing my classmates for a group dinner or campus event was a nightmare. Now, I use Google Docs to create web forms to send to my friends and classmates. My friends have gotten involved too, using it for keeping track of club participation, voting on housing for their fraternity’s beach weekend, and even conducting surveys for major research projects.

Posted by: Shep McAllister, HackCollege.com Blogger & Trinity University Student

Comment-only access in Google documents

In the past several months, we’ve added new discussion and commenting features to improve collaboration in Google documents. As an engineer, I often create docs with design concepts and send them to my team to review and provide feedback, and we use the commenting features to facilitate these discussions. Sometimes, I want to let team members view and make comments without allowing them to directly edit my document.

Over the next several days, we're releasing a new sharing option so that you can let people view and add comments to your documents without giving them edit access. To give comment-only access to your document, click on the Share button. From there, add in the contact you’d like to share your document with, and select Can comment.


You can also choose to give comment-only access to anyone with the link or anyone on the web by changing the sharing settings within the document. To do this, click Change in the sharing settings window and change visibility options to Public on the web or Anyone with the link, then change the access options to Can comment.

Similarly, if you’re using a Google Apps account, click Change in the sharing settings and select either “People at [your domain] who have the link can access” or “People at [your domain] can find and access.” Then change access option to Can comment.


Users that have comment-only access can view your document and add comments throughout -- without being able to change the content of the document directly.

We hope this latest feature in discussions helps you get the feedback you need while providing you with more control over the content in your docs. So comment away and tell us what you think -- below or in the forum.

Posted by: Sarah Wu, Software Engineer

Gmail and Gmail for mobile go global again, available in Persian

Posted by Ian Hill, Localization Project Manager

At Google, we want to make our products universally accessible and useful, and that means providing them for as many people as possible in the language they speak. The Gmail and Google Localization teams have worked together to bring Gmail to people around the world in 53 languages. Today that number grows to 54, because we’re proud to announce that through working with the Persian Initiative Team, we are able to release Persian (Farsi - فارسی), as the newest language available in Gmail. If you or someone you know speaks Persian, they can change the language in Gmail by selecting it on the Gmail settings page, under the language dropdown.


Gmail for mobile is also now available in Persian through your mobile browser.


To read this announcement in Persian, visit the Google Persian blog.

Never run out of calling credit with auto-recharge

Posted by Posted by Ilya Frank, Senior Software Engineer
Cross-posted from the Google Voice Blog

 If you're calling internationally from Gmail a lot, you may have noticed that your calling credit goes a very long way... which makes it easy to get caught off guard when it runs out.

So based on your feedback, we implemented the ability to auto-recharge your account: just go to your billing page (click on the add credit link next to your balance) and select the recharge amount. When your calling credit dips under $2 or 2€ we will automatically charge your credit card on file for the selected amount.

This feature becomes available after your first purchase and can be changed or disabled at any time.

This week in Docs: Page numbers in documents and one click to Google Cloud Print

This week in Docs, we’re announcing page numbers and page count in documents, plus one click to Google Cloud Print -- a couple features that we hope will save you time and energy.

Page numbers and page count in documents
Today we’re making it possible to add page numbers and page count to your documents. You can use the Insert > Page number option to add page numbers to the header or footer of your documents.


We’ve also added the option to insert page count, which displays the total number of pages in your document. You can combine the page number and the page count to create more advanced headers and footers. For example, to create the “Page 3 of 15” header below, take the following steps:

1. Go to Insert > Header.
2. Click the right align icon in the toolbar to move the cursor to the upper right corner.
3. Type the word “Page”.
4. Go to Insert > Page number > Top of page to add page numbers to the headers of your document.
5. Type the word “of”.
6. Go to Insert > Page count to add the total number of pages to the headers of your document.

Print with Google Cloud Print in just one click
Earlier this year, we announced Google Cloud Print for mobile documents. Google Cloud Print is a service in Beta that allows printing from any app on any device, OS or browser without the need to install any software.

We’re making it easier to print on the go directly from your mobile documents list in Google Docs. Simply select a document from the documents list and click on Actions > Print from the bottom toolbar. Currently, you can use Cloud Print in Google documents and spreadsheets.


To get started, you’ll need to connect your printer to Google Cloud Print. To learn more, check out the new site.

We hope you’ll take advantage of these latest features. Stay tuned for the next This Week in Docs.

Posted by: Chris Graves, Software Engineer Intern

Making Google spreadsheet functions easier to discover and use

From the simple SUM function to GoogleLookup, Google spreadsheets continues to add features that help you power through data. But sometimes it can be a challenge to find the one you need to use or figure out the right way to use it. We’ve made the following improvements to help you quickly discover and understand all of the powerful functions that Google spreadsheets has to offer.

Help snippets directly in spreadsheets
You shouldn’t have to interrupt your work to figure out how to build a particular formula, which is why we’re bringing help documentation directly into Google spreadsheets.

As soon as you start typing a formula into a cell, you’ll notice an auto-suggest box with the name and syntax of the function you might be looking for. Mouse over any of the suggested functions, and you’ll see a description that explains the function, its syntax, and how it’s used. You’ll also see links to related content and a link to the complete list of functions.


Auto-suggest displays syntax and help documentation for all 300+ available functions and even recognizes nested functions, making it easier to build complex formulas.

Revamped help documentation in the Google Docs Help Center
We’ve also completely rebuilt our help documentation for Google spreadsheet functions with invaluable input from some of our most active forum users such as ahab, yogia1, Ted J, A.P.L, MarinusP, and other forum Top Contributors. Here’s a look at what’s new:

• A completely new table for browsing help documentation for all 300+ Google spreadsheets functions. This table is easy to browse, sort or search. To view the table, you can visit the Google Docs Help Center, click the complete list of functions link in the auto-suggest help snippets, or select Help > Function list in any Google spreadsheet.
• Help documentation for nearly 60 new functions and formulas.
• More detailed help documentation, including better instructions for some of our most sophisticated and complex functions.

All of these improvements are now in English, and will be available in additional languages in the coming weeks. So take advantage of these new resources at your fingertips and you’ll be a Google spreadsheets ninja in no time.

Posted by: Michael Schidlowsky, Software Engineer

New in Labs: Preview Pane

Posted by Maciek Nowakowski, Associate Product Manager

When I check my email, I often rely on the message snippets to figure out which messages to open first. Sometimes, though, I want to see more than snippets, which is why I’m happy to announce that you can now preview messages in your inbox using a new feature in Gmail Labs called Preview Pane. It’s probably a very familiar layout to those of you who have used Gmail on a tablet device. We also think it’s going to work especially well if you have a larger resolution screen.

Click the image above to see a larger version.

After you enable Preview Pane from the Labs tab in Gmail Settings you’ll see a toggle button in the top right corner of your message list, which lets you switch between preview and list views.


For those of you who have more vertical space you can also move the preview pane below your message list. You can enable this using the dropdown arrow next to the toggle button:


By default there is a 3-second delay in marking a conversation as read after previewing it. If that doesn’t feel natural to you, you can change the timing in the General tab of settings:


If you’d like to remove the new layout, simply return to Gmail Settings and disable the lab. Finally, don’t forget to let us know what you think about the latest addition to Gmail Labs.

Give your templates a refresh in the new document editor

We continue to add new features like pagination and discussions to the new document editor, and we want to make sure you always have access to all of the latest functionality -- whether you’re creating a new doc from scratch or using a template from the gallery. As part of this effort, we’re removing Google Docs templates created in the old document editor from the Google Docs template gallery.

Starting on September 30th, old style templates will remain accessible to their owners and to anyone who the template has been shared with, but they will no longer be visible in the public gallery. This will only apply to the public Google Docs template gallery; templates created in Google Apps domains will not be affected by this change.

You can ensure your templates remain in the gallery by converting them to the new document editor. Just follow these simple steps:

1. Open the document from your documents list
2. Click the Preview link at the top of the document to see what it looks like in the new editor
3. From inside the preview window, click the Update this document link

When old style templates are removed from the gallery on September 30th, the template owners will still be able to restore the templates to the gallery by upgrading them to the new editor.

By making this change, we hope to bring the best possible experience to more documents.

Posted by: Jeff Harris, Product Manager

Better control in Google Sites with page-level permissions

Today we’re introducing page-level permissions, a new feature that will allow you to control who can view and edit your Google Site on a page by page basis.

Using page-level permissions, you can make some pages private for certain users while keeping other pages public for everyone to see. For instance, let’s say you have a Google Site that you’ve shared with your team and your manager. You can allow your team to see one set of pages, let your manager edit another set of pages, and keep yet another set of pages private for only you.

Only site owners have the ability to enable this feature, which is turned off by default for new and existing sites. To turn on page-level permissions, go to More Actions > Sharing and Permissions.


From there, click Enable page-level permissions. Then, in the dialog box, click Turn on page-level permissions.


Once page-level permissions is enabled, you’ll have three options to choose from:

• allow a page to inherit all of your site-level permissions
• elect to include future site-level changes to a page
• prevent a page from inheriting any future changes made at the site-level

Using page-level permissions should give you greater control over who can edit and access your Google site. To learn more about setting page-level permissions, take a look at our getting started guide. Let us know what you think in our support forums.

Posted by: Eric Zhang, Software Engineer

Tuesday tip: Stars

Posted by Kathleen Chen, User Education Specialist

Stars are handy for marking important messages, but how do you mark really important messages? That’s where Gmail’s additional stars options can come in handy.

I like to use purple stars to mark important messages from my family, red exclamation points for messages that need my immediate attention, and a green check mark for messages that I’ve already taken care of but want to keep track of (ok, so we’re using the word “star” loosely here). This way your inbox can become like a to-do list.


Now that Superstars has graduated from Gmail Labs, it easy to incorporate these different stars into your workflow. Go to the General tab in Settings, then scroll down to the “Stars” section:


Here you can select which stars you want to use, and in which order you want to them to cycle through when you click the star icon in your inbox. Simply click and drag the stars to the appropriate spot in the lists.

If you want to have all your starred messages show up at the top of your inbox so you see them right away, try out the Starred first inbox style.

You can also find messages with specific stars by using the following queries in your search box:

has:yellow-star
has:red-star
has:orange-star
has:green-star
has:blue-star
has:purple-star
has:red-bang
has:orange-guillemet
has:yellow-bang
has:green-check
has:blue-info
has:purple-question

Want more tips? Make sure to follow Gmail on Twitter to see our weekly #tuesdaytip, or follow our community manager Sarah Price on Google+.

The Google Docs app for Android now with Web Clipboard and in 46 languages

In April, we introduced the Google Docs app for Android, which allows you to access and create new docs on the go, directly from an app on your Android phone. Since then, we’ve continued to work on ways to improve your mobile experience, and I’m excited to share a couple of new updates that we hope will do just that.

Starting today, you can easily take pictures with your Android phone and insert them into a Google document, using the new Web Clipboard feature. Here’s how:

1. From the Docs widget on your phone, tap the camera icon.


2. Snap a photo then select Send to Web Clipboard and press OK.


3. Open any Google document from your computer. Click the Web Clipboard icon and select the item to paste into your doc.


A couple of other new features for the Android app include improved open and send options. You can open your documents with any compatible viewer application or send a doc as an attachment through email or another app on your phone.

Last but certainly not least, we’re making the Docs app available in 45 additional languages so more users around the world can access, share and edit on the go. Here’s an example of what the app looks like in German:


You can grab the app from Android Market and learn more by visiting the help center. As always, let us know what you think in the comments or on the forum.

Posted by: Tobias Thierer, Software Engineer