Google Docs - Online Word, Excel & Powerpoint

Google Docs is one of the best products of Google for the Netizens. It is designed with the intent of making Online the Office applications like Word (Word Processing), Excel (Spreadsheets) and Powerpoint (Slide Presentations). The Office applications space has been ruled by Microsoft's MS-Office suite for a long time with standalone applications running on individual user computers.

Google apparently is aiming for taking away this lion's share of MS [gradually] with the introduction of Google Docs which is absolutely FREE along with the storage to keep the files online. The biggest advantage of Google Docs is it being online, can be accessed from anywhere in the world with just an Internet connection. No issue of manually synchronizing the files between two different computers. Just open the file using the Internet browser from either location to access it. Isn't that exciting ?

When you first open Google Docs using the URL http://docs.google.com, you will be prompted to Sign-in using your Google Account (same as your Gmail account). If you do not already have one, you can Sign Up for the service by clicking on Get Started. Note that signing up for Google Docs doesn't require you to use Gmail. You can just use any of your email accounts to login and use the service once registered.

You will see a screen similar to below after you Sign-in to the service for the first time.

You can use the New menu to see the various file creation options available. Currently Google Docs provides only Document, Spreadsheet and Presentation as the file options. Document is similar to MS-Word which is used for word processing. Spreadsheet is similar to MS-Excel which is used for entering data in tabular forms and apply calculations and make charts. Presentation is similar to the most famous MS-Powerpoint which is used to present data/pictures using presentation Slides. We will talk about the Folder option at a later time in the right context.

Choosing the Document option opens a word processing tool within your browser window. It has three tabs on left side by names Edit, Insert and Revisions. On the right side it has Share and Publish tabs.

The EDIT tab offers the most basic functionality expected from the word processor tool. It has Save, Print, Undo, Redo options and Text formatting options like fonts & their attributes, alignment of paragraph text and bulleting. The INSERT tab has advanced options to insert Table, Image, Link, Comment, Separators and Special characters. We will talk about Revisions tab later.

Here you can see a simple document composed using the Google Docs.

Once after you compose the Document you can save it and choose many other options from the File menu. There you find options to export the document into many different formats like RTF, TXT, HTML, PDF and MS-Word. I think the option to export to PDF & MS-Word formats is most useful than the rest.

Under the SHARE tab (right side of the tool) you find options to invite Collaborators and Viewers. In the PUBLISH tab you get the option to publish the entire document to a unique URL (generated by Google Docs). This way it would be convenient to share the Read-only version of the document with whomever you want via email or instant messaging. Also you have the option to post the document content to a Blog hosted at one of the popular Blogging services.

You can use the Preview link to watch it in the print preview kind of view (has to mature yet) and the Print link to trigger the printing option.

Choosing the Spreadsheet option in the New menu will open the spreadsheet application in your browser. It has Edit, Sort, Formulas and Revisions tabs on the left side. On the right side it has Discuss, Share and Publish tabs.

The EDIT tab has most of the basic things like Formatting options, Alignment options, Insert/Delete columns/rows, merge adjacent cells and the Chart option. SORT tab has options to sort columns and freezing of columns/rows. The FORMULAS tab is what quite useful for the serious spreadsheet users. It provides simple Mathematical formulas to complex Financial/Logical/Statistical/Text formulas and ways to import data from external sources in HTML/XML/CSV/TSV/RSS/ATOM formats. You also get the option to group a range of cells.

While the SHARE and PUBLISH tabs are similar to what we discussed earlier, the DISCUSS tab is new. When you have multiple Collaborators working on the same Spreadsheet you can use the DISCUSS tab to make a Live Chat with the rest. I think it is really a cool idea.

Here is a screen of how the Spreadsheet tool looks like with a Chart embedded.

Choosing the Presentation option from New menu will open the tools for creating Slides for Presentations. Probably this is the only tool in Google Docs suite still needing lot of development to add more features. Currently it just features the basic options to create static slides (here I mean without Animations) and still missing many important features (like textures, gradients, grouping, drawing stuff etc.).

The options in the EDIT tab are easy to understand. Give them a try. Here is a screen showing what I could make with these basic features available.

Again the SHARE and PUBLISH tabs are like what we discussed earlier. They help you invite Collaborators and create unique URL for the presentation. Also the PUBLISH tab gives you the HTML code to embed the presentation into your web site.

As we have observed the REVISIONS tab in all the tools we discussed. Whenever we make changes to the Document/Spreadsheet/Presentation they will be saved under this Revisions tab as Undo steps. It is like Track Changes feature in MS-Office.

The other interesting feature I would like to explain about is different ways of uploading your existing files to Google Docs so they will be there online for you forever and also make your job easy.

Next to the New menu there is a button with the label Upload. Clicking on it will open the File Upload window that looks like below.

As you can see Google Docs accepts many common formats of each file type to be uploaded. Though there are few limitations on file sizes at this time, I am sure some time in future Google will fix them. If you want to upload a file to Google Docs which is already on web somewhere, then you can key in the URL of the file. Also you can specify the file name (different from original) to be known by inside Google Docs.

The other way to upload the file is mentioned in the bottom section of the same Upload window. It generates a unique email id (it makes me remember Gmail Aliases) and tell you to email the file to that address so that it will be added to your Google Docs.

One more way is to actually copy the content from your local file and paste into a new Document/Spreadsheet. It is may not work well this way always, but for simple files this is much better way in my opinion.

Finally we look at how to organize the files that are being created or uploaded to your Google Docs. The first screen that appears soon after Signing into the Google Docs service is the place for it. You might find the interface very similar to the Gmail interface which is very true. If you right click on any file you will be prompted with multiple options like saving as PDF, add a Star, Delete, Share, Publish etc. These options may vary based on the file type.

From the New menu you can also choose the Folder option which will create a New Folder and add it to the hierarchy on the left. You can select file from the right pane and use the Move To menu to move them to the folder you just created. It is also possible to create nested folders (folders inside folders) for the convenience of better organizing your files.

Actually Google is confusing us calling them as FOLDERS when they are really not. Simplest way to prove is a single file can be part of two different Folders. How is it possible if it is moved to one of them ? Google actually treats these Folders as Gmail Labels. So it is possible for a file to be have two or more labels assigned.

So what are you waiting for ? Go start exploring the Google Docs. I am sure it will really make your life easy.

Using Gmail Filters

Filters is an essential feature of Gmail that compliments Labels to better organize your emails. Here I try to help you on how to get the most of this cool feature in Gmail.

As the name says Filters can be used to filter out your emails based on a certain criteria. The criteria can be like where the email came from, whom the email addressed to, having certain words in the email subject, having or not having certain words in entire email.

You can create a new filter from Setting > Filters > Create New Filter

Use Test Search to make sure your filter criteria is fetching only those email you expected. Now click on Next Step to see the Options of what you can do after filtering those emails meeting the search criteria.

You may prefer to Archive them, mark them as Read mail, assign a Star, apply a Label (this is really cool), Forward it to another email address (quite useful if your office does not allow accessing Gmail, you simply forward to your office email address those important emails) or Delete them. You also have an option to apply the filter to any existing emails that meet the filter criteria.

If you combine the power of filters with Gmail aliases, it will be very easy to organize your email and especially filter out any spam from Inbox. When you fill online forms to subscribe / register on various web sites, use your Gmail alias and then create a filter to apply a label to the email sent to that alias and also prefer to Archive it. This way you can avoid unwanted or not so frequently used emails appearing in the Inbox instead have them moved to a folder (aka Label).

This powerful combination of Filters & Labels makes your life easy in organizing your Gmail mailbox.

Using Labels in Gmail

Labels in Gmail are like folders in Yahoo, Hotmail and other such mail services. You can assign one or more labels to a conversation. Rmember that by the very nature of Gmail, messages with same subject line are grouped as a Conversation.

Applying labels to conversations makes them easy to access at a later time using the label names. For example you can apply a label name Friends to all emails received from your friends or apply a label name Family to all mails from family members/relatives etc. You also have the convenience to remove a label from a conversation and assign to some other etc.

Gmail also allows assigning colors to label names so that they are easy to identify among a long list of conversations. Here is a screen showing colored labels applied to different conversations:

As you might have noticed, there is a label by name Inbox which is assigned to all the email received in your Gmail inbox. Inbox is the default folder (infact a label) which opens when you first sign-in to you Gmail. To make sure you get to see all the new email, Gmail automatically assigns the Inbox label as the mail arrives into your mailbox. The only way to remove the Inbox label from any conversation is to Archive the conversation.

Like I mentioned earlier, Labels help in retrieving the required conversation quickly. This is achieved using the power of Gmail Search along with labels.

Let us say you have assigned a label international to all emails related to your international travel (like tickets booking, itineraries etc.). So when you have to retrieve information about your in-flight meal preference, your Gmail search string can be label:international meal.

Note that words like meal are so common and simply searching for them can bring up too many results from your huge mailbox. So using the label:international query modifier, you are limiting the search to emails with the label name international assigned.

You can try even more complex search like label:international -label:domestic +meal -dubai which brings up all conversations having the word meal but not the word dubai and assigned with the label international but not assigned with the label domestic.

Remembering the Google Search lessons? Yes, most Google Search tips get applied here.

Gmail allows Aliases

Gmail allows aliases to receive email into the same mailbox using an apparently different address. Unlike traditional aliases, Gmail offers email addresses of the syntax your.username+words@gmail.com.

To make it more clear a Gmail alias is created with your Gmail username suffixed by any number of words that are separated by the + sign. For example, my Gmail address is pranav.yaddanapudi@gmail.com. Now some of the valid aliases to this email address are pranav.yaddanapudi+feedback@gmail.com , pranav.yaddanapudi+makingiteasy+feedback@gmail.com and pranav.yaddanapudi+makingiteasy+blog+feedback@gmail.com.

Apart from allowing + sign to create aliases, Gmail also allows usage of . (dot) to create aliases. Because Gmail doesn't recognize dots as characters within usernames, adding or removing dots from a Gmail address won’t change the actual destination address. Messages sent to yourusername@gmail.com, your.username@gmail.com and y.o.u.r.u.s.e.r.n.a.m.e@gmail.com are all delivered to your inbox, and only yours.

And now to answer your quick question in mind, yes, you can combine the two techniques to create a hybrid alias to your Gmail address. Something like p.r.a.n.a.vyaddanapudi+makingiteasy+feedback@gmail.com
As you can notice, I used all the above discussed aliasing methods to create this email address which can very well serve as an alias to my Gmail id pranav.yaddanapudi@gmail.com.

Isn't it interesting to know that Gmail allows multiple (infact unlimited) aliases to your Gmail address ? So what are you waiting for ? Go surprise your friends and family with your new Gmail aliases.

In the next post we will discuss the amazing benefits of using these aliases to better Organize your Gmail.

Google Search Tips (ver 1.1)

Last time we discussed about some Google Search tips that made Google Search easy. Though it started as an internet search engine, over years it developed the intelligence to help us in many different ways. Thanks to its constant innovations in Internet Search Technology!

Now we will look at some more interesting search methods that help us find the definitions of words, know Foreign Exchange rates, Scientific Conversions, do Mathematical Calculations and even find products in a specific price range. Isn't that not exciting ?

• Google Search helps us with a way to find the definition of words from around the world. This is achieved by using the search prefix define: to your search term. These definitions are actually sourced from the Glossary pages of many websites and online books. An example is a search on define:AIDS

• Here comes my favorite search method which coverts one currency into another considering the ForEx rates on that day. For your surprise this does not require usage of any prefix or so. Just plain English to tell Google Search the source and target currencies and the quantity. For instance to know the value of a British Pound in Japanese Yen the query would be pound in yen. If you want to know how many Indian Rupees make 3 million US Dollars, here is the query 3 million usd in inr (that's huge!)
  

• One the lines of above tip, you can even do scientific conversions. That means conversion of one unit into another. Be it Electricity, Area, Pressure, Volume whatever it may be. Here are a few examples to make it more understandable.
• To convert Energy 100 watt hours in joules
• To convert Area 1800 square feet in square yards
• To convert pressure 500 psi in newton per square meter
• To convert volume 20 cubic litre in cubic ml

• Now comes the most interesting part of all, Mathematic Calculations. This feature of Google Search (more appropriate to say Google Calc!) almost replaces your desktop calculator. Though limited by own knowledge of Mathematics, I try best to illustrate some of the complex calculations you can perform on Google Search. Here you go.
• power 5^15
  
• percentage 14.4% of 45
  
• Baisc Mathematic 5*(15-3.456)/26+14
  
• Trigonometric tan(45)/sin(30)*pi
  
• Using all 5*(tan(45)*log 100)/(50% of 200)*2^8

• Finally let's discuss how to perform a search for some product in a specific price range. I am sure this is of most interest to many reading this article. The syntax of search string is to suffix the product by a price range which is separated .. (two dots)
  
• notebook $500..$1000
• canon eos 30d $1000..$1500

Having seen such powerful capabilities of Google Search, no doubt it is touted as the most revolutionary search engine in the history of Computing.

I will be posting even more advanced Google Search tips in coming days.

Happy Googling !

Google Search Tips (ver 1.0)

Google has become an integral part of our online life. Oxford even added Google as a verb in its English Dictionary. Its web search capabilities are quite powerful and save us a lot of time in finding the right information on the web.

Here I would like to illustrate some important Google Search tips and techniques that are quite useful in day to day life.

• Note that your searches on Google are NOT case-sensitive. So a search on MalDivEs gives the same results as searching on maldives.

• It is always recommended to use more than one search term (or keyword) and those terms specific to the topic of interest for better results. For example, a search on maldives hotels yields better results than just searching on maldives to find hotels details in the beautiful islands.

• Google ignores some common words and single characters (like why, if, of, a, i etc.) from the search terms to improve the search quality. You can easily identify the terms ignored by Google from the blue bar above your search results.

• By default Google assumes AND operator between your search terms. It means that Google tries to display results that have all the search words you used. You can force Google to use OR logic by including OR (in upper case) between search terms. This will show results matching at least one of the search terms.

• There is a way to tell Google that you would like to see results that contain some word or character as a much by preceding the term with a + (plus) sign. In the same way you can precede the search term with a - (minus) sign to tell Google to NOT TO show results having that search term.
  

• In real scenarios a combination of these two search operators proves to be more useful. A perfect example is searching for news and information about Titanic Ship while ignoring results containing the reference to the movie or music. In this case the search string would be +titanic -movie -music.
  

• Also, you can force Google to do a phrase search which means that the entire search string becomes one search term. To do this enclose the complete search string inside a pair of " (double quotes). When you make a search with terms i wish if i could there are very less chances of seeing more results showing the phrase as it is. Same works like a charm when you search the phrase surrounded by double quotes "i wish if i could".

So far we discussed various possible simple search methods in Google to achieve targeted results. Note that you are not limited to any one of these methods of search. The best results are always possible when you combine more than one method!

We will discuss other interesting Google Search Tips in coming days.