What's Up with Google Docs?!

Post date: Oct 18, 2011 8:54:36 PM

Last week, Google updated the Google Docs interface. The following is from Google on the changes and how to navigate the new interface.

Searching in Documents List

To find what you're looking for, type your keywords in the search box. You can also use search operators to search by dates, owners, or phrases.

If you'd like to search for items you’ve added to a collection, select the collection in the left navigation panel, and a blue box with the collection’s name appears in the search box. Then, type your keyword in the box.

Click Documents or Images & video to search for certain types of files or documents within these tabs. To get even more specific results, click the arrow next to the tab name, and select the type of item you'd like to see. You can also click the More options tab to filter your results further.

Navigation panel

These links will help you find your documents easily:

1. Home: Will show you all your files and docs, except those in the Trash. If you'd like to hide an item from this list, right-click the item and select the option Don't show in home.
2. Starred: Shows you only items that you’ve marked with a star.
3. All Items: This view displays all your items, including those you've hidden from the home view, but excluding those in the Trash.
4. Trash: Includes all the items in the trash. Note: you can move only items that you own to the trash. For items you don't own, you can select Remove from my Documents List from the Actions menu.
5. My collections: This view shows collections that you've created to keep related items together. To create a collection, click Create new, select Collection, and then drag any item from your Documents List into the new collection. (Learn more about collections)
6. Collections shared with me: Displays collections that have been shared with you. (Collections that are shared through a mailing list will not show up here.)

Looking through your Documents List

You can use the tabs at the top of your Documents List to browse or search for your items by document type. You can also use the tabs to access additional features.

For example, click Images & videos to see only these types of files, play your videos and view a slideshow of your photos. If you'd like to find images, but don't want to see videos, simply click the arrow next to the tab name, and select Images.

Under More options you’ll find additional filters:

• Visibility - Choose the sharing state of the document you’re looking for. Was it private or shared more broadly?
• Ownership - Are you the owner of the document or was it shared with you?
• Not in any collection - Is it a document that you haven’t included in a collection?
• Opened by me - Did you open it at some point?

Organize your results with the Sort by option in the top right. Sort your results by Title, Relevance, Starred, Last modified (by you), and Last opened (by you).

Next to each document title, you can see whether or not the document is shared and which collection it's in.

The details pane

When you select a file by clicking anywhere in a row, the details pane appears. Here, you can see a preview of your document and its title, the date when you last viewed it, and when and by whom it was last modified.

From this pane, you can also change certain settings for the document, such as collections it's associated with, sharing settings, and previous versions of the file.

If you’ve selected a video, then you can even preview it directly in the details pane.

You can open a document by clicking its title, and select it by clicking anywhere else in the row. Select multiple items by pressing the Ctrl (PC) or Command (Mac) key and clicking the items. Selecting an individual item will display the details pane where you can view and modify important file information.