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Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Google Docs & Spreadsheets Released

Google merged (Word-like) Writely with (Excel-like) Spreadsheets into the new Google Docs. Now when you go to writely.com or spreadsheets.google.com, you’ll be forwarded “Google Docs & Spreadsheets” at docs.google.com. You can then choose “New document” or “New spreadsheet” or open one of the existing files. From this file launch window, you can also select a couple of files at once and tag, star, delete or archive them.

As usual, both text files and spreadsheets can be edited along with others simultaneuosly. Another nice feature is that you can upload Microsoft Word files, or attach a Word file to an email and send it to a specific email address to have it be uploaded. For example, my upload email address looks something like “Philipp-32qweetz21-xyze20@prod.writely.com”.

There are still some quirks to be worked out here. For example, new docs open in the same window whereas new spreadsheets and old docs launch in a second window. Another example is that Google’s default name when you want to save a spreadsheet is “Unsaved spreadsheet” – duh, when you save it it’s not unsaved anymore, so the name never makes sense. Or, when you star a file, the whole page will stall momentarily (unlike in Gmail, where this is happening behind the scenes).

Another issue, as ever so often, are unclear naming conventions while Google is working out just what they’re presenting here; for example, when you select “new document” then this means you create a new rich text file, but the headline “active documents” in the launch window means both rich text files and spreadsheets. The application title itself – Google Docs & Spreadsheets – seems awkwardly long. Let’s wait a few more years till they add a couple of other tools and call this thing “Google Office”...

The discussion started in the forum yesterday before this was released.

[Thanks Sohil & everyone in the forum discussion, M., Huw L., Randy, and Pinto!]

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