Best Bytes: Google Docs
Posted on September 7, 2010 by kcarlson | No Comments
Submitted by April Frost
Google Docs is just one of the many, free web-based collaborative tools available from Google. This tool can be accessed from any computer with a browser, internet access, and a Google (Gmail) account, which is also free. No software downloads are required to use this tool. Google Docs is the “document processing” piece of Google, which includes: word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation formats, as well as the two newly added options, forms and drawing. Any items created or saved to Google Docs can be shared with anyone who has a Gmail account.
Key Features
• Files can be created online, or uploaded from most popular file formats, including DOC, XLS, ODT, ODS, RTF, CSV, PPT, ODF, and Office 2007 formats (except Publisher and Access). Most of the files I have uploaded did not need to be reformatted when I opened them in Google Docs, including files with tables.
• Collaboration on files can be done in real time. Edits are tracked, and the document can be reverted back to any previous revision.
• All documents are safely stored online, and can be organized, not only in Google Docs, but also on each user’s iGoogle page. (Documents can also be instantly created directly from the iGoogle page, but that is another topic!)
• Google has also created plug-ins to make Google Docs viewable on most mobile devices.
• Files can be instantly published to a website, or can be downloaded as PDFs.
• Google supports 53 languages, if you need to translate your documents.
• Words can be added to the dictionary.
• Tables can be easily edited by dragging.
• Bulk uploads: Google Docs now allows multiple files to be uploaded at the same time. The files do not have to be the same format.
• Storage limit: 1024 MB.
Comments
• Menus are fairly intuitive, but could use some improvement. Because files are saved automatically, “Save” is not an option under the file menu, instead it is located on the upper right side of the page. To rename a file, you have to click on the filename, “Untitled”, which is located at the upper left of the page, after the Google Docs logo. For most collaborative documents, however, this works very well.
• Hundreds of templates and page layouts are available to browse and search by category.
• The Drawing app has a lot more features than I had expected, including the ability to download images directly from the internet. I prefer it to Paint.
• The Forms app is very easy to set up. I would use this to create a test or survey that will be printed, since we have access to SurveyMonkey.
• Access time can be a little slow.
Click here to give Google Docs a try!
Posted 9/7/10
Comments
Leave a Reply