By Nancy Conner
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Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Getting Started with Google Apps

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A Google Account is your passport to the Google apps universe. It gives you a way to sign in just once and access all of Google’s goodies. It’s also where you add new programs, change your name or password, and do other across-the-board management. And here’s the best part: A Google Account is free. As in totally, completely, won’t-cost-you-a-dime free.

If you’ve created an account for any Google offering—like Gmail, Google Docs, or Google Calendar—you’ve already got a Google Account. So you can skip the section on signing up and turn to to learn more about what you can do with your account.

On the other hand, maybe you’ve made it well into the 21st Century without a Google Account, thank you very much. If that’s the case, your time has come: You need an account to use Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, and many other Google tools. In addition, when you’re signed into your Google Account, you can customize your apps, check out recommendations made just for you, and get even better search results. This chapter shows you how to get started.

The bulk of this chapter addresses the boring but necessary sign-up procedures required to uncork the Google apps magic. If you’ve already got a Google Account, or consider account sign-up guidance a crutch needed only by lesser mortals, feel free to skip ahead to , where the heart of the Google apps coverage begins.

It takes only a couple of minutes—you can pop a celebratory pizza in the microwave and be done before the timer dings. Then, as you munch on a slice or two, you just have to pick which programs you want to use, and add a bit of personal info.

If you use Google Apps through your organization—for example, if you sign into Gmail with a user name that looks like myname@mycompany.com—you don’t need to create a separate Google Account. Your organization creates and manages your apps through its own Web site. (See for more information about Google Apps for organizations.)

Start by going to Google’s home page (http://www.google.com) and, in the upper-right corner, click the link that says, “Sign in”. Alternatively, you can go straight to the Google Accounts sign-in page at

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Signing Up for a Google Account

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It takes only a couple of minutes—you can pop a celebratory pizza in the microwave and be done before the timer dings. Then, as you munch on a slice or two, you just have to pick which programs you want to use, and add a bit of personal info.

If you use Google Apps through your organization—for example, if you sign into Gmail with a user name that looks like myname@mycompany.com—you don’t need to create a separate Google Account. Your organization creates and manages your apps through its own Web site. (See for more information about Google Apps for organizations.)

Start by going to Google’s home page (http://www.google.com) and, in the upper-right corner, click the link that says, “Sign in”. Alternatively, you can go straight to the Google Accounts sign-in page at http://www.google.com/accounts.

Whichever route you take, the Google Accounts sign-in page looks like . After you’ve opened your account, you’ll see this page again whenever you want to sign in and use your Google services. For now, though, click the right-hand “Create an account now” link, and you’re taken to the page shown in .

Figure : Clicking the “Sign in” link on Google’s home page takes you here. The left-hand side of the page tempts you with various programs you can use once you sign up. The right-hand side is where you’ll sign into the Google Account you’re about to create. To get started, click “Create an account now” (circled).

If you have questions about Google Accounts before (or even after) you sign up, more help awaits at www.google.com/support/accounts.

Figure : Here’s the page you fill out to create a new account. It asks for pretty basic info: You supply an email address, a password, and your country, and then fill out the spam-preventing word verification box (you can’t see it here) and agree to Google’s terms of service (see the box on ).

Google’s sign-up form is simple; you can fill it out and start using your new Google Account in mere seconds. Here’s what’s on it:

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You’re All Signed Up—Now What?

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You can sign into your new Google Account by going to Google’s home page and clicking the upper-right “Sign in” link, or by going to www.google.com/accounts. Just enter the email address you used to create the account, along with your password, and then click the “Sign in” button.

If you already have Gmail, you can sign into your Google Account with your Gmail user name, which is the part of your Gmail address that comes before @gmail.com. So if your Gmail address is janedoe@gmail.com, your user name is janedoe.

The first time you sign in, you see a page that looks something like .

Figure : Your Google Account page is split into three sections. On the left, Personal Information lets you view and edit the info associated with your account (flip to for the lowdown on managing these details). On the right, under the “My services” heading, Google shows which programs you’re currently signed up for. Below that, under “Try something new”, is a list of other Google products you can sign up for—just click a link to get started. The links in the upper-right (circled) let you jump to different parts of your account, get help, or sign out.

At the top of the page, Google displays the email address or user name you used to sign in. (You can change your email address or user name by editing your personal information; see .)

You can have more than one Google Account—for example, maybe you want one Gmail address for work and another for personal stuff—but Google lets you sign into only one account at a time.

The links in the top-right part of the page help you find your way around your Google Account:

• Google Home. Click this link to go to the familiar Google search page (www.google.com).
• Help. Lost? Confused? Got a quick question? Clicking Help takes you to the Google Accounts Help page, which covers all the ins and outs of using your account.
  Where the Help link takes you depends on the Google app you’re using when you click it. If you’re using Gmail, for example, it takes you to the Gmail Help page. To get to Google Accounts Help, click the Help link while you’re on the page pictured in , or go to

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Managing Your Google Account

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Sooner or later you’re going to want to modify your Google Account settings—do things like add a back-up email address, specify your time zone, start using a new program, and so on. This section tells you how to manage your account so it meets your needs.

As you probably noticed when signing up, Google doesn’t ask for a lot of personal info to create an account. But what if you want your account to be a little more personalized? Say you prefer to be greeted by name (rather than by email address) on your Google Account page. No problem. Just head over to “Personal information” section of the Google Account page () and click its Edit link. The page shown in appears.

Figure : Use this form to change the personal info in your Google Account. All the stuff gathered here is optional—you don’t have to add your name, but your Google apps might feel more like “yours” if you do.

Edit personal information

Things change with time: A wedding or divorce changes your name, or you move to a different Zip code, time zone, or even country. Use this section to add or change any of the following (optional) settings:

• First name
• Last name
• Nickname
• Zip code
• Country
• Time zone (The drop-down menu here shows time zones based on your location. To change the list to show all the world’s time zones, turn on the “Display all timezones” checkbox.)

Associate email addresses with your account

You need just one email address to open your Google Account, but you can associate other addresses with it, too. This can come in handy, for instance, when someone invites you to an event they’ve created on their Google Calendar ()—whichever email address the other person uses for the invitation (maybe they’ve got that old alumni address you occasionally use), you can respond.

When you type an address into the “Add an additional email address” text box, and then click Save, Google fires off a verification email. As soon as you click the verification link, Google adds the address to your account.

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The Google Toolbar

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Even though you don’t need a Google Account to download the Google Toolbar, it’s good to learn about it early on because the Toolbar can supercharge your account and make managing it a breeze. The Google Toolbar, shown in , is a customizable toolbar that rides piggyback on a Web browser and puts your favorite Google apps—and more—right at your fingertips.

There are several different versions of the Toolbar floating around. The version you have depends on the browser you use, and when you installed the Toolbar. Versions covered here include Toolbar 4 and 5 for Internet Explorer, and Toolbar 2 and 3 for Firefox.

Google Toolbar has oodles of features, some of which aren’t covered here. Because this book is about Google apps, this section focuses on the parts of the Toolbar you can use to make working with Google apps faster, easier, and more efficient; specifically, using the Toolbar with Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, and your Google Account. To find out everything you can do with the Toolbar, visit http://www.google.com/support/toolbar.

Figure : Your Web browser tucks the Google Toolbar right below the address bar.

Before you get started, make sure you have the right equipment for using the Toolbar. Here’s what you need:

• To use Google Toolbar with Firefox:
  • Operating system: Windows 2000 or XP, Mac OS X version 10.2 or higher, or Linux.
  • Web browser: Firefox version 1.5 or higher.
• To use Google Toolbar with Internet Explorer:
  • Operating system: Windows 2000, XP, or Vista.
  • Web browser: Internet Explorer version 6.0 or higher.
    Sorry Mac fans: The Google Toolbar doesn’t work with Safari. To get Firefox, or to upgrade to the latest and greatest version, go to www.firefox.com, and then click the big green Download Firefox–Free button. To install or upgrade Internet Explorer, surf over to Microsoft’s Download Center at www.microsoft.com/downloads

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Chapter 2: Word Processing with Google Docs

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Ask people who work with Google Docs what they love about it (besides the price), and two words will crop up pretty fast: “accessibility” and “collaboration.”

In Google Docs—a Microsoft Office–like collection of word processing, spreadsheet, and slideshow presentation tools—your documents are stored on Google’s computers, so you can access them from anywhere with an Internet connection. No more smacking your forehead because the report or spreadsheet you meant to bring home is sitting on your office computer’s hard drive, or worrying about where you might’ve lost that keychain-sized flash drive that holds all your important files. No matter where you are, as long as you can get online, you can edit, format, save, and otherwise work on all the files in your Google Docs account. You can even edit word processed documents offline, and upload them automatically the next time you connect to the Internet.

But what makes Google Docs truly revolutionary is the way it lets you collaborate with others on a single document in real time. No more sitting around twiddling your thumbs, waiting for your turn as a file gets passed from person to person for editing and revisions. With Google Docs, up to 10 people can edit the same document simultaneously, redefining the whole concept of working together.

Because there’s just so darn much you can do with Google Docs, this book devotes three chapters to it. This chapter explains how to get your Google Docs account up and running, and then discusses word processing. covers spreadsheets, and looks at presentations, a relatively new addition to the Google Docs arsenal.

Google Docs works on Windows, Macintosh, and Linux computers. To make sure Google Docs works the way it’s supposed to on your computer, use one of these Web browsers:

• Internet Explorer 6 or higher for Windows
• Firefox 1.07 or higher (At this writing, Google Docs doesn’t work with the beta version of Firefox 3 that’s available for testers.)
• Mozilla 1.7.12 or higher
• Netscape 7.2 or higher

If you use one of the following browsers, you’ll probably run into trouble trying to use Google Docs (or it may not work at all):

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Before You Start: Browser Requirements

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Google Docs works on Windows, Macintosh, and Linux computers. To make sure Google Docs works the way it’s supposed to on your computer, use one of these Web browsers:

• Internet Explorer 6 or higher for Windows
• Firefox 1.07 or higher (At this writing, Google Docs doesn’t work with the beta version of Firefox 3 that’s available for testers.)
• Mozilla 1.7.12 or higher
• Netscape 7.2 or higher

If you use one of the following browsers, you’ll probably run into trouble trying to use Google Docs (or it may not work at all):

• Safari
• Internet Explorer on a Mac
• Opera
• Netscape 4
  Not sure what version your Web browser is? Open the browser, and then click Help→About to find out. You can download the latest version of Firefox at www.firefox.com; for Internet Explorer, go to www.microsoft.com/ie. Both browsers are free.

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Welcome to Google Docs: A Quick Tour

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If you’re the proud owner of a Google Account, you can add Docs to your Google empire in a jiffy. Go to the Google Docs sign-in page (www.docs.google.com), and then enter your Google Account user name and password. Google adds Docs to your account, and takes you straight to the Google Docs workspace (). (If you don’t yet have an account, flip back to for full details on how to sign up.)

If you’re signed into your Google Account page (www.google.com/accounts), then you can add Docs from there. Look for Docs in the “Try something new” section. (If you don’t see it, click the More link, and then, on the page that opens, find Docs.) Click the Docs link and you’re off to the races.

Figure : The first time you sign into your Google Docs account, you see a page like this one. From here, you can create a new file or upload an existing one from your computer. The circled buttons get you started working with documents. When you create or upload a document, it appears in the Docs list in the center of the page.

You can get invited to view or collaborate on a document even if you haven’t signed up for Google Docs. If you get an email from Google telling you that someone’s inviting you to share a document, then click the link in the message.

If you have a Google Account and you’re already signed in, then Google opens a new window displaying the document you’ve been invited to share, and you can get to work on it right away.

If you’re not signed into your Google Account, or if you don’t yet have one, a new browser window opens, showing a version of the shared document that you can read but not edit. At the top of the page, you see links where you can sign into your account or create one:

• Sign in. Click this link to sign into your Google Account. When you do, Google takes you to your Google Account page. From here, you can click the Docs link to go to the Google Docs home page, where the shared document is already in your Docs list.

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Customize Your Setup with Google Docs Settings

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Once you open your Google Docs account, you can start creating or uploading documents. But it’s worth taking a minute to check out your account settings. For example, make sure Docs knows what time zone you’re in—especially important if you’re collaborating with others spread across the country or around the world.

Start by clicking the upper-right Settings link (next to the email address associated with your account). This gets you to the page shown in .

Figure : Click the Settings link (circled) to jump to the Settings page’s General tab, where you can adjust things like the language Google uses to communicate with you (as well as the flavor of your built-in dictionary), your time zone, and how your name appears to collaborators.

Here’s a potpourri of miscellaneous settings you can adjust to make Google Docs even easier to work with:

• Language. This setting doesn’t translate your docs from, say, English to Turkish or Swedish or Chinese (or vice versa). Instead, it controls how Google Docs talks to you. In other words, it tells Google Docs which language to use for all the buttons, commands, and menu items it displays. You’ve got a couple dozen languages to choose from.
• Your current time zone. Choose a time zone from the list. If you’re using Google Docs on the road, then you can change time zones as you travel.
• Right-to-left. If you write documents in Hebrew or Arabic, you know that people read and write those languages from right to left, instead of the left-to-right flow of words that English and many other languages use. Turning on this checkbox gets you a right-to-left button in your document composition window, which you can click to make text start at the right side of the page, moving left as you type.
• Display name. When you collaborate with others on a document, this setting determines how your name appears to them.
• Blog settings.

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Getting Your Docs into Google

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At last, you’re ready to create and save your first document. And if you’ve got existing documents sitting on your computer that you’re eager to move into Google Docs, this section shows you how to do that, too.

To create a brand-new document in Google Docs, start on the main Google Docs page shown back in . Above the Docs list, on the left side of the blue bar, click New→Document. A new window like the one in opens. This is the Google Docs text editor, your home base for creating and editing word processing documents. All you have to do is start typing.

Figure : The Google Docs text editor is where you work on your documents-in-progress. The formatting buttons in the toolbar let you format your text as you write. Use the right-hand Share button to invite others to collaborate on your document or publish it as a Web page or blog post.

See the section “Working with Text” () to learn about formatting your whole document and formatting smaller chunks of text as you type.

Chances are you’ve got some documents you’d like to transfer from your computer to Google Docs. You’ve got a few different ways to do that, all explained in the following sections (including details on what types of documents Google Docs can work with). Once they’re there, you can work with those files from any computer that’s got an Internet connection.

Use the Google Docs home page

The Google Docs home page (shown back in ) has an Upload button above the Docs list, in the blue bar. Click it to open the “Upload a File” page shown in .

Figure : Use the top half of this page to upload a document by telling Google Docs where to find it on your computer or the Web. If you’d rather email the document to your Google Docs account, use the ginormous email address in the bottom half of the page. When you email a document, you can send it either as text inside the email or as an attachment.

It takes just a few steps to upload your document:

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Ready, Set, Write: Working with Documents

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Once you’ve stocked Google Docs with some documents—whether by uploading or creating them from scratch—you can get to work writing and editing. This section covers just about everything you might want to do with your documents—from formatting to working with tables, to printing and deleting.

When you’re done working on a document and want to return to the Docs list, you’ll probably click the upper-right Docs Home link—and then wonder what happened to Google Docs. Clicking Docs Home saves the document, and closes the text editor window. The Docs home page is still there, it’s just in a different window. This behavior can be disconcerting at first, especially if you tend to have a lot of windows open at once.

Even the most ardent Google Docs lover will probably get kinda quiet if you ask about Docs’ formatting capabilities. Despite all the things Docs does so well—from access to storage to searching to collaboration—it doesn’t offer all the formatting bells and whistles that you get with, say, Microsoft Word. On the other hand, it’s free and it gets the job done, offering all the basics and a bit more. Despite some limitations, you can still produce professional-looking documents with Google Docs. This section explains your formatting options.

If Docs doesn’t offer formatting that you need, such as a particular font, export the document (), and use a program like Word to apply the formatting. Make the document as fancy as you like, and then print out or email the formatted version.

To apply formatting like line spacing or a font style to an entire document, follow these steps:

1. Create a new document or open one from the Docs list. Select Edit→“Document styles”.
   Docs opens the Document Styles box, shown in .
   

   Figure : To apply formatting to your whole document, use the Document Styles box. The Preview window gives you a glimpse of what your changes will look like. If you’re writing in Hebrew or Arabic, turn on the Right-to-left checkbox. To apply your formatting choices to new documents, turn on the “Make these the default settings for all new documents” checkbox (circled).

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Editing Documents Offline

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Since Google’s computers store your documents, you can access those documents from anywhere you can connect to the Internet. But what about times when you’re not online, but you still need access to your stuff? Like when you’re on a plane and you need to work on a presentation or in a hotel room with spotty Internet access. No problem. This section tells you how to set up your computer so you can edit and save documents offline.

At this writing, you can view and edit word processor documents offline, and view (but not edit) spreadsheets offline. You can’t work with presentations offline at all. And even though you can edit any existing word processing documents while you’re offline, you have to be connected to the Internet to create a new document.

Before you can edit your documents offline, you need to download and install Google Gears. Gears works with your Web browser to let you open, read, edit, and save documents even when you’re not online. (The documents get stored on your computer.) The next time you connect to the Internet (using the same computer and browser) and sign into Google Docs, Google automatically syncs the documents in your Docs account with the work you did offline.

To install Google Gears, your computer and browser must be one of these combinations:

• Mac OS X 10.2 or higher, with Firefox 1.5 or higher
• Windows XP or Vista with Firefox 1.5 or higher
• Windows XP or Vista with Internet Explorer 6 or higher
• Linux with Firefox 1.5 or higher
• Windows Mobile 5 or higher with Internet Explorer 4.01 or higher

If your computer meets these requirements, point your Web browser to http://gears.google.com. (If you’re on your Google Docs home page, you can click the upper-right Offline link; in the dialog box that opens, click “Get Google Gears now”.) On the main Google Gears page, click the big blue Install Google Gears button.

Google opens a page that shows its Terms of Service and Privacy Policy (see the box on for the highlights). If you want, turn on the checkbox that lets Google collect anonymous information about how you use Google Gears. If you’d rather not share that info, leave the checkbox turned off. Then click the Agree and Download button.

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Sharing and Collaborating on Documents

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When Google Docs first appeared, the thing that really got everybody talking was how easy it is to share documents and collaborate on them in real time. Not only can you share a Google doc, you can invite other people to work on it with you. For example, imagine planning the guest list for a wedding—when the bride lives in Chicago, her parents live in Boston, the groom is in Berlin on a business trip, and his parents live in Phoenix. It’s not like everyone can gather around a table and finalize the list. But with Google Docs, they can all work on the same guest list (despite being in different time zones) by adding and deleting names, making comments, and getting everything set in time to order the invitations.

This section explains the different ways you can share a Google doc with others, from emailing it to inviting folks to roll up their sleeves and work on it with you.

If you use Google Docs through your organization’s Google Apps account (you sign in through a company Web site instead of going to www.docs.google.com), your domain administrator can limit your ability to share documents with people who don’t work for your organization. (See for details.) In that case, you might find that you can’t invite someone from outside your organization to share documents or receive sharing invitations from people who don’t work with you. You can still send and receive documents as attachments, though, but you can’t edit them together in real time.

Perhaps the most obvious way to share a document is to email it as an attachment. In Google Docs, you can put the finishing touches on your document, and then share it with the world (or maybe just a friend or two) via email. Unlike inviting collaborators to work on a document with you, emailing gives the recipient his own copy, so he can work on it in Word or another word processing program.

To email a document from the Google Docs text editor, follow these steps:

1. Open the document you want to email, and then click Share→“Email as

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Organizing and Finding Documents

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It doesn’t take very long to accumulate a long list of files in your Google Docs account. And just as it’s hard to put your hands on one particular memo when your desk is overflowing with papers, it can be difficult to find the document you want on your Google Docs home page. (The words needle and haystack may come to mind.) To be efficient, you’ve got to be organized. Fortunately, Google Docs makes that easy. And however you organize your documents, you’ve got Google’s searching power to help you find them.

The Docs list on your Docs home page () displays documents according to how recently you or a collaborator has worked on them. Without any effort from you, this list offers a great organizational tool because it groups documents according to when they were opened: today, yesterday, earlier the week, and so on. If you know you last looked at a document a couple of weeks ago, you don’t have to waste time scanning today’s or yesterday’s files.

You can also use the home page’s left-hand menu to display only certain groups of documents. For example, if you’ve created any folders (), use the left-hand menu to show only the documents in a particular folder. You can also display only docs you’ve shared with a particular collaborator, or just spreadsheet files. The left-hand menu offers lots of options for sorting your files; explains them all.

Mark important documents

In elementary school, if you did a good job on your paper, the teacher gave you a gold star. In Google Docs, you’re in charge of distributing the gold stars. If there’s a document you want to mark as urgent or otherwise important, find it in the Docs list, and then click the star to the left of its name. The star turns gold to call attention to that document. To turn a star off, just click it again.

You can easily find all your starred documents: On the bar above the Docs list, click the Star button—it’s just to the left of the word “Name”.

Hide a document

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Chapter 3: Working with Docs Spreadsheets

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Start spreadin’ the news: Google Docs spreadsheets let you and up to 50—count ’em, 50—of your colleagues collaborate on a single spreadsheet simultaneously. It’s a great, timesaving way to speed up group projects and actually get things done.

The program’s popularity has been spreading like wildfire. In the first year after its launch in 2006, Google Docs (originally called Google Docs and Spreadsheets) grew by 84 percent, to more than 1.6 million users—that’s a lot of number crunching! And its growth is sure to continue, thanks to Google’s clever, highly addictive invite-and-share system. When somebody accepts an invitation to view or work on a spreadsheet, that person sees how easy-to-use, secure, and accessible these spreadsheets are. That’s convinced a lot of people to switch to Google Docs as their primary spreadsheet

If you’re a spreadsheet maven, you might find Docs spreadsheets a little on the basic side. Right now, for example, you can’t use autofilters like you can in Excel. On the other hand, Docs spreadsheets offer everything that most people need: You can sort your data in various ways, work with formulas and functions, name cell ranges, create forms and charts, apply formatting rules, and a whole lot more. Add the bonuses of easy collaboration and a central location for all your spreadsheets, and Google’s take on the spreadsheet is definitely worth a try.

Before you can dive in, you need a Google Account. has the full story on signing up for Google Docs () and getting familiar with the Docs home page ().

On the Docs home page, shown in , spreadsheets appear in the Docs list along with documents () and presentations (). Click a spreadsheet’s name to open it. (If there aren’t any spreadsheets listed, you can create a new one—the next section tells you how.)

Figure : In the Docs list, the spreadsheet icon (circled) is an easy way to spot which files are spreadsheets. To display just your spreadsheet files, under the left-hand pane’s “Items by type” section, click Spreadsheet (you may have to click the + sign next to “Items by type” to expand the section).

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Getting Started with Google Docs Spreadsheets

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Before you can dive in, you need a Google Account. has the full story on signing up for Google Docs () and getting familiar with the Docs home page ().

On the Docs home page, shown in , spreadsheets appear in the Docs list along with documents () and presentations (). Click a spreadsheet’s name to open it. (If there aren’t any spreadsheets listed, you can create a new one—the next section tells you how.)

Figure : In the Docs list, the spreadsheet icon (circled) is an easy way to spot which files are spreadsheets. To display just your spreadsheet files, under the left-hand pane’s “Items by type” section, click Spreadsheet (you may have to click the + sign next to “Items by type” to expand the section).

gives a lot of info about organizing () and searching () your files in Google Docs. The tips there apply to spreadsheets as well as word processing documents.

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Creating a Spreadsheet

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Google Docs makes it easy to either create a brand-new spreadsheet or import an existing one. This section shows you how to do both, and then covers the basics of entering data and saving your spreadsheet.

Google Docs gives you two ways to create a new spreadsheet:

• From the Docs home page. In the blue bar above the Docs list, select New→Spreadsheet. Docs opens the spreadsheet editor in a new window ().
• From the spreadsheet editor. If you’re already working with a spreadsheet and need to start a whole new one, in the upper left, click File→New. Docs opens a new window with a nice, empty spreadsheet for you to play with.

Figure : When you create a new spreadsheet, Docs opens it with the spreadsheet editor’s Edit tab selected. To enter data, click a cell, and then start typing. The toolbar above the spreadsheet offers common editing and formatting tools. The tabs across the top of the page let you view and work with the spreadsheet in different ways. The ones on the left—Edit, Sort, Formulas, and Revisions—are all for working with this spreadsheet. The ones on the right—Discuss, Share, and Publish—are for taking your spreadsheet public. This chapter explains all your options.

You’ve probably got some spreadsheets on your computer that you work with regularly. You can easily import them into Google Docs so you can work on them from any computer with an Internet connection. But first you need to know about some

• Google Docs can only import spreadsheets in certain file formats:
  • Excel spreadsheets (.xls)
  • OpenOffice Calc spreadsheets (.ods)
  • Text files (.txt)
  • Comma-separated values (.csv)
  • Tab-separated values (.tsv)
  • TSB files (.tsb)
• Google Docs also has some size limitations for spreadsheets:
  • You can import only files that are 1 MB or smaller.
  • A Google Docs spreadsheet can hold up to 10,000 rows, 256 columns, 100,000 cells, or 40 sheets. When your spreadsheet reaches one of those limits (whichever comes first), that’s it.

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Formatting a Spreadsheet

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When a spreadsheet is nothing but a gaping expanse of rows and columns, it can be tough to read. With a few quick formatting tricks, though, you can snazz up your spreadsheet, making it easier on the eyes—and its data easier to read.

To format text, select the cell or range of cells to which you want to apply formatting (see for tips on selecting ranges of cells), and then choose a formatting option from the Edit toolbar ( explains what the various toolbar buttons do).

When you start a new spreadsheet, all cells use the Normal format—which treats numbers as just plain numbers, not percentages or currencies or anything special—until you tell Google Docs to use some other kind of formatting. If you’ve got a column holding a particular kind of numeric data, such as dollar amounts or percentages, then you can tell Docs to give those numbers dollar signs or percent symbols. You can also specify whether you want numbers to show decimal places, or you can round your figures to whole numbers.

You can also change numbers from one numeric format to another. For example, if a column contains decimals (.10, .05, .74, 1.26, and so on) and you think those numbers would be easier to understand as percentages, select the column, and then click Format→Percent. The numbers change to 10%, 5%, 74%, 126%. Pretty nifty.

To format all the numbers in a column, select the column you want by clicking the letter cell at the top of the column (A, B, C, and so on), and then click the Format button. The top part of its menu gives you the formatting options shown in (date formatting is explained in the next section).

Table : Numeric Formats in Spreadsheets

Format	Example
Rounded	1,500
2 Decimals	1,500.00
Financial rounded	(1,500)
Financial	(1,500.00)
Currency rounded	$1,500
Currency	$1,500.00
Percent rounded	99%
Percent	99.00%

To change from dollars to another currency, select the cells you want to format, and then click Format→“More currencies” to choose from a whole treasure chest of currencies: euro, pound, yuan, zloty, ruble, baht, peso, rupee—more than two dozen in all. In the unlikely event that your currency isn’t on the list, you can add it. Type it into the list’s “Another currency” box, and then click OK.

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Adding and Deleting Rows and Columns

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Spreadsheets have a tendency to get bigger and bigger (maybe that’s why they call them spreadsheets). If your data is growing and you need more cells to contain it, you’ve got a couple of different ways to add new rows or columns. First, select a row or column that will be next to the new row or column. To select, click the row’s number on the left of the column’s letter at the top of your spreadsheet. Then, either right-click (control-click) or on the toolbar, click Insert. If you selected a row, then you can insert a new row above or below the selected one. If you selected a column, then you can insert the new column to its left or right.

Want to add multiple rows or columns? Select the number of rows or columns you want to add (by holding down the Shift key as you click the rows or columns), and then right-click (control-click) or click the Insert button and make your choice from the menu; Docs inserts a group of blank rows or columns identical to the number you selected. So if you need to add 10 new rows to the bottom of your spreadsheet, select the last 10 rows, right-click (control-click) or click Insert, and select “10 rows below”.

To double the size of your spreadsheet, select the whole thing by clicking in the square that’s above row 1 and to the left of column A, and then click Insert. If your spreadsheet is 100 rows long and 15 columns wide, for example, the Insert menu has options for adding 100 new rows or 15 new columns.

You can move rows or columns by cutting and pasting them, but Docs has a faster, easier way. To move a row or column (or any cell or range of cells, for that matter), first select what you want to move. Then, move your cursor to an edge of the selection so that it changes to a pointing hand. Drag the cells to their new location. Release the mouse button, and the cells jump from their old location to their new home. Easy, huh?

When you’re moving a row or column, make sure there’s a place to move it to: Create an empty row or column first. Otherwise, you may lose data. If you move, say, a row on top of an existing row, then Docs pastes the moved data over what was already there.

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Working with Multiple Sheets

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Often, you have related data in separate spreadsheets that you want to keep together in one file. For example, if you plan a lot of events, you might have one spreadsheet for venues, one for caterers, and another for entertainment. It would be chaos to try to mix these together into a single spreadsheet, but it would be great to keep a spreadsheet for each category in the same file.

You can keep all these spreadsheets together in the same file using sheets, which let you stack spreadsheets on top of each other so you can hop between them without opening a new file. With just one click, you can add a new sheet to an existing spreadsheet. With the spreadsheet open, click the lower-left Add Sheet button, shown in . Docs creates and opens the new sheet. Below the sheet in the lower left are links where you can click back and forth between sheets. The current sheet displays as a button with a drop-down arrow. Click it to choose among these options:

• Delete
• Duplicate
• Rename
• Move left/right

Sheets start out with names like “Sheet 1” and “Sheet 2,” so it’s a good idea to give them descriptive names using the Rename option. The Move option lets you change a sheets place in the stack of spreadsheets.

Figure : The Add Sheet button does just what it promises—adds and opens a new sheet to your spreadsheet. When a sheet is open, click the down arrow next to its name to choose one of the options shown here: delete, duplicate, rename, or move.

When you add new sheets to an existing spreadsheet, you probably want the newcomers to have the same formatting as the original. Here’s how to make that happen: Click the name of the current sheet in the lower left, and then select Duplicate. This creates an exact copy of the original sheet. Rename the copy, select all its cells (click the square above row 1 and to the left of column A), and then clear the data by selecting Delete→“Clear selection”. The data disappears, but the formatting remains.

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Adjusting Cell Sizes

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If you’ve ever squinted at a jam-packed spreadsheet, you know that adjusting the height of a row or the width of a column can make the spreadsheet a whole lot easier to read. To do this in Docs, move your cursor to the part of the spreadsheet that labels the columns or rows—the light blue area just above or to the left of the spreadsheet’s cells. Place your cursor on the border between two columns or rows. A thick bar appears on the border, and the cursor changes to a double-headed arrow, as shown in . Now you can drag to adjust the position of the border (and with it the size of the row or column). If you double-click while the cursor is a thick bar, the row or column automatically resizes to fit the longest entry in that selected row or column.

To resize all the rows or columns in a sheet, select the entire sheet, and then resize.

Figure : When you position your cursor as shown here (circled), you can resize rows or in your spreadsheet. Move it to the top of your spreadsheet to resize columns.

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Timesaving Data Entry Tricks

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There’s a lot more to working with spreadsheets than typing in a cell, hitting Tab, and then typing in the next cell. The following sections show you different ways to work with data more efficiently.

Entering data in a spreadsheet can get repetitive. Auto-Fill cuts down on the drudgery with one-click copying and pasting, so you don’t have to type the same content over and over a million times. For example, imagine you use a spreadsheet to schedule employees’ hours, one sheet per month. When a new week rolls around, you don’t want to have to type in everyone’s name in column A all over again. That’s where Auto-Fill comes in. Auto-Fill lets you select a range of cells, and pop their content right into a group of adjacent cells. Here’s how:

1. Select the range of cells whose contents you want to copy. For example, in the employees’ name example, you’d copy everyone’s name.
   As shows, a teensy blue box appears in the selection range’s lower-right corner.
   

   Figure : The shaded area in column A is the area selected as the Auto-Fill source. Click and drag the little box in its lower-right corner (circled) to where you want to copy the selected text, as indicated by the dotted line.
2. Position your cursor over the little blue box, so the cursor turns into crosshairs. Then, drag the selection box to encompass the cells you want to Auto-Fill. When you’ve expanded the selection box to whatever size you want to fill in, let go of the mouse button.
   Docs fills the blank cells with the text you selected, in the same order as the original. If you selected fewer cells than are in the range whose contents you copied, Docs fills in as many new cells as you selected, and leaves off any Auto-Fill text that it doesn’t have room for. If you selected more cells than the original range, Docs fills in the Auto-Fill text from beginning to end, and then starts over again.

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Checking Your Spelling

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Unlike the Docs text editor, the spreadsheet editor doesn’t have built-in spell checking. But you have a couple of ways to check the spelling of the words in your spreadsheet. If you use Firefox as your Web browser, Firefox 2 and later has a built-in spell checker. To turn it on (if it’s not already), open Firefox for Windows, click Tools→Options→Advanced, and then click the General tab. If you’re using a Mac, click Firefox→Preferences→Advanced. In the Browsing section, turn on the checkbox labeled “Check my spelling as I type”, and then click OK. With spell checking turned on, Firefox puts a dotted red line under words it doesn’t recognize as you type in your spreadsheet. (Once you move to a different cell, you don’t see an underline even if a word is spelled wrong—Firefox checks spelling only while you’re typing in a cell.)

Download or upgrade to the latest version of Firefox at www.firefox.com.

If you’ve installed the Google Toolbar (), then you can use that to check your spelling in Google Docs spreadsheets; a spell check button comes with the standard buttons. The Toolbar’s spell checker doesn’t check your spelling as you type (which can be kind of distracting, anyway), but one click checks spelling throughout your spreadsheet.

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Inserting Images

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