{"id":2203,"date":"2010-09-07T09:00:27","date_gmt":"2010-09-07T16:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mlgsca.mlanet.org\/newsletter\/?p=2203"},"modified":"2011-01-04T11:53:48","modified_gmt":"2011-01-04T18:53:48","slug":"best-bytes-google-docs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mlgsca.mlanet.org\/newsletter\/?p=2203","title":{"rendered":"Best Bytes: Google Docs"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0Submitted by\u00a0April Frost<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Google Docs<\/a><\/strong> 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 \u201cdocument processing\u201d 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.
\n\u00a0
\nKey Features
\n<\/strong>\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 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.
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Collaboration on files can be done in real time. Edits are tracked, and the document can be reverted back to any previous revision.
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 All documents are safely stored online, and can be organized, not only in Google Docs, but also on each user\u2019s iGoogle page. (Documents can also be instantly created directly from the iGoogle page, but that is another topic!)
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Google has also created plug-ins to make Google Docs viewable on most mobile devices.
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Files can be instantly published to a website, or can be downloaded as PDFs.
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Google supports 53 languages, if you need to translate your documents.
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Words can be added to the dictionary.
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Tables can be easily edited by dragging.
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 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.
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Storage limit: 1024 MB.
\n\u00a0
\nComments
\n<\/strong>\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Menus are fairly intuitive, but could use some improvement. Because files are saved automatically, \u201cSave\u201d 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, \u201cUntitled\u201d, which is located at the upper left of the page, after the Google Docs logo. For most collaborative documents, however, this works very well.
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Hundreds of templates and page layouts are available to browse and search by category.
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 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.
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 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.
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Access time can be a little slow.
\n\u00a0
\nClick here to give Google Docs a try!<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Posted 9\/7\/10
\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Submitted by\u00a0April Frost \u00a0Google 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 \u201cdocument processing\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mlgsca.mlanet.org\/newsletter\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2203"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mlgsca.mlanet.org\/newsletter\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mlgsca.mlanet.org\/newsletter\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mlgsca.mlanet.org\/newsletter\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mlgsca.mlanet.org\/newsletter\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2203"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.mlgsca.mlanet.org\/newsletter\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2904,"href":"https:\/\/www.mlgsca.mlanet.org\/newsletter\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2203\/revisions\/2904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mlgsca.mlanet.org\/newsletter\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mlgsca.mlanet.org\/newsletter\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mlgsca.mlanet.org\/newsletter\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}