The official Google blog mentions some new features for Google Spreadsheets:
* Revisions (yeah great!)
* Publishing feature (link to your spreadsheets in blogs, etc.)

Others:
* Stock value lookup functionality (why not add a generic webservice function?)
* Lookup in Google Q&A (powerfull, but how does that match with the news of closing down Google Q&A?)

More on
http://www.google.com/google-d-s/whatsnew.html

Stock value look-up and Google Q&A inparticular are extremely clever. This is the kind of powerful yet subtle integration I want to see from Google. I'm really impressed with this. Great new features!

>> how does that match with the news of closing down Google Q&A? <<

Q&A is a Web search feature; it's Google Answers that is eventually closing down.

this "new" features are "old";
fe., this one is about 1 week old:
http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dfzv8b2j_3dh253q

erm, yes, ok, sorry. this is a doc and the feature is only new for spreadsheets.... :/

If I type in a Q&A function (=GoogleLookup) in to GS, asking for someone's age it gives their date of birth.
And the info doesn't all come from Google Answers, most of the one's I've tried come from Wikipedia but there are other sources as well.

are you adding the correct attribute to the the function?
http://docs.google.com/support/spreadsheets/bin/answer.py?answer=54199

<< And the info doesn't all come from Google Answers >>

I don't think any of it comes from Google Answers does it? Not unless the Google Q&A algorithms pick up content from there too...

also nice one:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pHY1a1ksuajJgAimzaVOREA

Sorry, my fault indeed, I confused Google Q&A with Google Answers.

BTW Feel free to experiment with this features in the For GoogleBlogoscoped spreadsheet in your docs.google.com list.

If you don't have it, I'll give you acces to it :P

yes please. mynick at gmail

Phil, the link on the main page doesn't go here correctly... I get an "oops can't be found."

While they're making changes, let me suggest a few (these apply to both docs and spreadsheets)

1.) why is check spelling on the lower right instead of in the toolbar where it belongs? I didn’t even know it was there when I first started using the site.
  
2.) If I’ve already saved… grey out the save button… or do something to let me know that the current document has been saved. If there’s nothing new to save, I shouldn’t be able to click save. Same with discard changes: If there’s no changes, what is it discarding? If it’s remembering since the last time I logged in, then that’s dangerous.

3.) why is “edit HTML” a link originally, then turns into a tab when I click it? That’s confusing and non-consitent.

4.) Preview needs to open in a new window. I click preview.. then there’s no “back” or “edit” button anywhere visible on the top of the page, so I close the window and then I’m gone.. That’s not good.

The Google Lookup function's Good but there's a lot of info it can't find. And for the age thing I put =GoogleLookup("name","Age") And it puts their DOB not age (as demonstrated on the For GoogleBlogoscoped sheet)

Ryan
1) I like it where it I, it's easy to find
2) I agree
3) I'd prefer a tab all the time
4) I agree

Ryan
1) I agree with you, should be on the toolbar. it is in gmail too!
2,3,4) Agreed

Anyway, no charts in this update :(

> Phil, the link on the main page doesn't go here
> correctly... I get an "oops can't be found."

Ryan, which link exactly? I tried to repoduce but failed..

the "continue the discussion" at the bottom of the main page post.

I had to find these comments via the forum, not the front blog page where I tried.

Google is about to release an API for the Spreadsheets, though the page is not yet available.
http://code.google.com/apis/gdata/spreadsheets.html

Haochi – Just today I had a customer ask me if my software could automatically update a google spreadsheet that they use with sales information. I said no, but maybe I can if they have an API. This is really actually quite cool... Would be nice if I could have the spreadsheet do a lookup in my software though, would be easier.

As with just about ever google new feature roll out, I have found a TON of flaws... for example, if I use
=GoogleLookup("AMD","ticker") it outputs "NYSE:AMD" so, in the next cell, if I use that output for a =GoogleFinance(OtherCell) it does not look it up!

I understand that when it returns a ticker symbol it is just stealing text from some site, but you would think that at least the result for some of the companies would work. This I think could be resolved in just using more fuzzy logic in the GoogleFinance Function.

An Other thing is that you can not use a GoogleLookup directly in a formula. I was trying to do an IF that would take a "#N/A That data is not..." result and just output the text "unknown" But I could not.

Other annoyances.... if I have time I'll post more... Hope Google is reading!

Travis: Regarding your problem with stock ticker lookups. I agree that the GoogleFinance lookup should be able to take "Exchange:Symbol" as an argument, it's not too hard to add a cell that translates the Lookup return to text that Finance understands. The following formula will give you the symbol finance is expecting:

=MID(B2, FIND(":", B2)+1,10)

(Where B2 is the GoogleLookup formula)

Oh, and I absolutely agree with your other complaint, not being able to use GoolgLookup directly in a forumla is a real pain, but it just means you need to put the lookups off to the side and create your displayed columns with the If statements based on them. It's annoying but it'll work :)

(Oh, and add a TRIM() around that formula – some of the ticker results have unexpected spacing!)

I am trying the IF function and want to test another cell such as

=IF(C10="ADV", 3," 0")

However, for the "false" answer, I would like to incorporate another forumla such as:

=IF(C10="ADV", 3,"(=IF(C10="PRO", 5," 0"))")

Of course, the above returnes an error. Is this allowed in any way?

Thanks in advance.

Grayson:

1) The 2nd IF statement shouldn't be in double quotes
2) You only need the equal sign before the first IF

Try this:

=IF(C10="ADV", 3,IF(C10="PRO", 5," 0"))

off topic (sorta) ;
how come the "New Features" button isnt bold?
it is on PicasaWeb

Docs:
http://docs.google.com/

PicasaWeb:
http://picasaweb.google.com/