Google goes public with an online word-processor and spreadsheet.
Google has bundled their acquisition of Writely and their own Google Spreadsheets into a single package known as Google Docs and Spreadsheets.
If you were trying out Writely or Google Spreadsheet go to http://docs.google.com/ and you’ll go through a few simple steps to move across to the new platform. That includes moving your Writely documents across.
Otherwise it appears that anyone can sign up for the new service from http://docs.google.com/
With this service you can create documents or worksheets online and save them either in a private storage space on Google’s servers or on your own computer.
You get the basic formatting options like bulleted lists, fonts plus sorting by columns and Excel compatible formulas.
The really big deal is that several people can work on the same document or worksheet at the same time – with edits showing up in real time.
You can also permit people ‘read only’ access so they can see a document or worksheet online but not change it.
The document formats supported are the current MS Office formats (.doc .xls etc) and also the OpenDoc formats (.odt .ods etc). Interestingly you can also save in PDF format as well as HTML web pages.
The HTML option means you can create web pages via Google Docs to be viewed as standard web pages. Blogs are also supported with special features to let you write a blog then post it to your site.
See https://office-watch.com/?28 for more on OpenDoc.
There’s also a useful option to save as ZIP – which will be good to save space and also reduce transfer time for bigger files.
Files less than 500k can be imported in HTML, plain text, .doc or .rtf formats. Note: .xls is NOT listed as an importable format.
Naturally we’ll be keeping a close eye on Google Docs and Spreadsheets – check out coming issues of Office Watch or, for the very latest, check out our new web site https://office-watch.com/ which is updated throughout the week.
