The Google Apps Blog

One button to merge all duplicate contacts

2009-12-15T22:54:00Z

Posted by Dominik Marcinski, Software Engineer

Managing a big address book can be a challenge, so it's no surprise that the top request for Google contacts is a fast, easy way to merge duplicate contacts. You've been able to merge contacts one-by-one for a while, but now we've added a single button that merges all your duplicate contacts at once. To clean up your contact list in one fell swoop, just click the "Find duplicates" button in the contact manager, review the merge suggestions (and uncheck any suggestions you don't want merged), and hit the "Merge" button.

If you've been considering getting all your contacts into Gmail or syncing your Gmail contacts to your phone, now's the time to do it. As we've written about previously, you can sync your contacts to a wide variety of devices (including Android, iPhone, Blackberry, SyncML, etc). So if you were dreading spending hours getting your contacts in order, now you can do it with a couple clicks.

New in Labs: Mark unread from here

2009-12-15T01:12:00Z

Posted by Jenny Ross, Software Engineer

I subscribe to a lot of really active mailing lists. Oftentimes, an email in my inbox will get dozens of replies before I get a chance to start reading it. If I only have a few moments to look at a particularly long and interesting discussion, I'd like to start reading it then; later, when I have some more time, I'll pick up where I left off. However, if I mark the thread as unread, it will return to its previously read state without updating to show what I just read. When I come back to it, I'll have to search for the last thing I remember reading. If I star the first message I still want to read instead, I might not remember that it needs to be read when I'm in my inbox later (and when I do read it, I'll have to expand lots of messages before I can read the conversation properly).

There's a new feature in Gmail Labs that will help with this. When you enable Mark Unread From Here from the Labs tab under Settings, you'll see a new "Mark unread from here" option in the drop down menu found in the upper right-hand corner of messages.

Clicking this option on a message tells Gmail that you want that message to be the first one you see when you reopen the thread later, with all messages after it open for easy reading. So, when you leave partway through reading a long thread, figuring out where to start reading again is easy. Give it a try and share your thoughts.

Co-editor presence for Google Docs presentation slides and elements

2009-12-14T17:40:00Z

Most of you know that when you co-edit a Google Docs spreadsheet, you can see the cells other people are editing. That presence information helps you simultaneously edit without stepping on each others' toes.

Today, we launched real time presence to Google Docs presentations as well. Now, when editing a presentation with a co-editor, you can see which slides he is editing, and if he is editing the same slide, then you can see which element -- text box, shape, image, video, etc -- he is editing.

Happy collaborating, and we'd love your feedback on our forum and ideas page.

Posted by: Roshni Malani, Software Engineer

Google Docs viewer Chrome extension

2009-12-10T18:01:00Z

The Google Chrome team launched beta support for extensions on Tuesday. We didn't want to miss the extension party, so we created a Google Docs extension. The Google Docs PDF/Powerpoint Viewer makes it easy to preview PDFs, Powerpoint presentations, and other documents you find across the web in the Google Docs viewer, instead of downloading them.

Let us know how you like the extension and what you like to see us add by posting a review on our extension's page.

Note that extensions are currently available only for the beta channel of Google Chrome for Windows and Linux.

Happy viewing!

Posted by: Wes Carr and Jesse Kinkead, Software Engineers, Google Docs

Sharing emails get a facelift

2009-12-09T19:30:00Z

Starting today, more colorful emails might be waiting in your friends' and colleagues' inboxes if you've shared Google documents with them. Check out the difference:

Old Email
New Email
In addition to the visual update, the new emails showcase your custom message rather than placing it at the bottom. Your buddy won't miss that important note about your shared document being a work of fiction (sound familiar?), because it's now prominently featured.

No more hunting for links either, just click the header:

Or, if multiple docs are shared, peruse a simple list:

The email's color and icon indicate the type of document at-a-glance:

Spreadsheets
Presentations
We know you're mighty busy, so we're always looking for ways to make Google Docs quicker and easier to use and share. Let us know what you think on the forums.

Posted by: Vance Vagell, User Interface Software Engineer

Communication and collaboration just got easier with Google Groups

2009-12-09T05:00:00Z

Picture this: you're working on a new project with your team. You ask your IT admin to create a new group that includes all of your team members, keeping in mind that you must ask them to update the group every time people join or leave the group. Maybe you're even wishing that (a) you had a secure, central place to manage this group and communicate with it, and (b) you could easily search group archives for information somewhere other than your inbox.

That's when your admin gives you the good news: creating, managing and sharing with groups just got a whole lot easier. Today, Google Apps is giving business and school IT administrators the ability to let users create, manage and collaborate in groups without needing IT help. This launch is a major expansion to the mailing list functionality and content sharing we released earlier this year.

The following Google Groups features are now included in Google Apps Premier and Education Editions:

Fast set-up. Employees and students can now create collaborative groups instantly without burdening IT, and manage the group settings to fit their needs.
Searchable archives. Group discussions are archived by default, allowing users to easily search and view past and present discussions via the web.
Sharing with a group. Once a group is set up, employees and students can easily share a document, spreadsheet, presentation, shared folder, site, calendar, or video with that group. No need to type in individual email address manually, or remember who joined or left the group. Plus, the shared items will only be accessible by the appropriate people, even as people join and leave the group.
Reply on behalf of a group. In addition to communicating via email or the web interface, the new functionality lets group managers send a message on behalf of a group.
IT capabilities. IT administrators still manage if and how users can create groups from the administrative control panel.

Google Apps Premier and Education Edition administrators can now enable the new groups functionality from the control panel by enabling the "user-managed groups" service. You can read more about this announcement on the Official Google Blog. Google Groups will be rolling out to Google Apps Premier and Education Edition domains over the next day, so if you don't notice these features right now, you should see them soon.

We're always developing new features to help you get your job done faster and more efficiently with Google Apps. Stay tuned to this blog for the latest updates as new features continue to come your way, or subscribe to our Google Apps update feed and get the news as it happens.

Posted by Shimrit Ben-Yair, Product Manager

Sort by relevance, export all and more

2009-12-08T22:00:00Z

Over the next few days, we will be enabling several new features in your Docs list.

Sort by relevance

The first is the addition of relevance ranking in your Docs list search results. Until now, anytime you searched for a document, the results were sorted by "last modified date".

Now, your search results will display the items most relevant to your search at the top of the list. We also added a new menu on the right side of the toolbar, which lets you decide whether you'd like to sort your Docs list by "Relevance," "Starred" or "Last Modified".

This improvement to search within Docs also includes automatic stemming and synonyms. So if you search for "check account", we'll also include results for a few variations of those words, including "checking account" (which is what you probably meant to type). Or if you search for "mac book", we'll also include results for "macbook".

Export all your files

There's also more good news from the Data Liberation Front. A few weeks ago we launched the new "Export..." functionality. Today, we added an "Export all" option, which lets you export all your docs (up to 2GB at a time) with one click. This is the equivalent of almost 100,000 Google Docs.

You can also export a single file and email it to anyone you'd like in a single step. Once you select an item, click "Share" and select "Email as attachment...". Then pick which format (PDF, MS Office, etc.) you want to use to send the item, compose your email, and hit send.

Sunsetting Email-In Your Documents and Files

Lastly, a change that we aren't excited about. We're removing the existing "email-in" feature. As you may know, it's been a bit buggy recently and only supports a small subset of document types compared to the Docs list. In order to address this, we'll be taking down the feature and working on a bringing it back in the future with more functionality and better integration.

In the meantime, you can use the multi-file upload in your Docs list or the GData API to programatically upload docs. You can also take attachments from GMail and open them in Google Docs.

If you have any questions, please let us know over on the forum.

Posted by: Vijay Bangaru, Product Manager, Google Docs

Change owner in a Google spreadsheet

2009-12-08T19:30:00Z

A month ago, we standardized the look and feel of the Google Docs editors. Consistency across all the editors remains an important goal, which is why we are happy to report that you can now change the owner of a Google spreadsheet. This feature was already available in documents and presentations.

Changing the owner of a document is helpful if you are working in a group and the owner of the document leaves your group or no longer needs to work on that document.

Do you have ideas on how to improve Google Docs spreadsheets? Submit your idea on the Google Docs product ideas page.

Posted by: LB Lincoln and Josh Danziger, Software Engineers, Google Docs

Offline Gmail graduates from Labs

2009-12-08T04:05:00Z

Posted by Aaron Whyte, Software Engineer

Almost a year ago, we launched Offline Gmail in Gmail Labs. By installing Offline Gmail, you're able to use the normal Gmail interface to read and write mail, search, and organize, even when there's no internet connection. And Flaky Connection mode speeds up Gmail when your connection is slow or unreliable.

Since we first launched in Labs, we've heard from a lot of you who tried Offline Gmail, and your feedback helped us make a lot of improvements. Aside from fixing bugs and making the whole offline experience smoother, we recently added two frequently requested features: an option to choose which messages get downloaded for offline use and the ability to send attachments while offline. Offline Gmail has proven particularly useful for business and schools making the switch to Google Apps from traditional desktop mail clients -- they're used to being able to access their mail whether or not they're online, and Offline Gmail brings this functionality right to the browser.

Now, we're happy to announce that Offline Gmail is graduating from Labs and becoming a regular part of Gmail. If you're already using it, then you're all set. While you'll no longer see it on the Labs tab, you can tweak your settings and turn it on and off from the Offline tab under Settings. If you'd like to get started with Offline Gmail on your computer now, here's how:

Click the "Settings" link in the top-right corner of Gmail.
Click the "Offline" tab.
Select "Enable Offline Mail for this computer."
Click "Save Changes" and follow the directions from there.

Thanks for all of the feedback over the last year -- and for putting up with the occasional bug or two. We're going to have a little toast, and then get right back to working on more improvements for 2010.

P.S. We received some interesting pictures in response to our call for photos of people using Gmail offline in our last post. Our favorite so far came from Ugo, who is at a Saharawi refugee camp in south Algeria, where he uses Gmail offline most of the time and connects via a satellite phone to our servers just once a day.

Spread some holiday cheer, one card at a time

2009-12-02T18:00:00Z

Posted by Jason Toff, Associate Product Marketing Manager

Update (12/6): We're all out of free cards, but if you're feeling crafty, you can still print and cut out your own.

Every year around this time I start thinking about the annual holiday email I send to friends and family members. I usually email my mom, dad, sister, friends and co-workers. But the one person who appreciates my season's greetings the most — my grandma — is stuck in the pre-digital age of snail mail. Of course, I could go to a store, aimlessly wander through the aisles, choose a card, wait in line to pay for it, go to the post office, pick up some stamps, etc., etc. — but wouldn't it be so much easier just to fill out a form and have Gmail handle the rest?

This holiday season, as a token of our appreciation to our most enthusiastic fans, we'll snail-mail a free holiday postcard on your behalf. Yes, through the mail and everything.

To send a card, visit gmail.com/holidaycard. We'll only be able to send cards to US addresses and to a limited number of people (due to limited Gmail elf availability), so be sure to request one soon.

And if you're headed home for the holidays, consider spending some "computer time" with loved ones who aren't as up-to-date with technology. With some luck, maybe this time next year you'll be able to email them a holiday card instead!

Wishing a happy holiday to you and yours!

New in Labs: Default text styling

2009-12-02T03:50:00Z

Posted by Darren Lewis, Software Engineer and Jon Kotker, former Software Engineering Intern

In the early days of email, messages were simple text meant to be read on a terminal. But with the growth of the web came the advent of HTML email, and overnight people began expressing themselves through bold and italics, colors and images, and whatever else their creativity inspired.

If you like to use a specific text style for your messages, you've had to change the font every time you're about to start typing out an email. Now, you can turn on default text styling from the Labs tab, then go to Settings and set your preferences just once.

Try it out and tell us what you think. If you live and breathe code, now you can set your default text style to a monospace font. If your life is purple, your email can be, too. But remember: whatever you see is what your recipients will see, so be nice to them and try not to clog the intertubes with ginormous bold italicized red script. ;)

Google Apps Premier Edition Innovation – Year in Review

2009-11-25T05:35:00Z

Google Apps is helping millions of companies save money, but more importantly, Google Apps helps businesses move beyond the slow, multi-year innovation cycle typical of legacy technologies. We’ve released over 100 significant improvements and updates over the last year, and businesses automatically have access to these updates without having to manage complex and costly upgrades.

Last week I hosted a webcast titled Google Apps Premier Edition Innovation – Year in Review to spotlight the most important improvements we’ve made recently. You can watch the replay below or see it on YouTube.

Innovation happening across the web is rapidly translating into better business email tools, more efficient collaboration choices for coworkers, and more secure, higher reliability technology for companies. We’re excited about what’s in store for Google Apps, and to keep up with future developments, you can subscribe to the Google Apps Updates RSS feed, or sign up for email alerts.

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

Send attachments while offline

2009-11-24T15:29:00Z

Posted by Andy Palay, Software Engineer

One of the most requested features for Offline Gmail has been the ability to include attachments in messages composed while offline. Starting today, attachments work just the way you would expect them to whether you are online or offline (with the exception that when you're offline you won't be able to include inline images). Just add the attachment and send your message.

If you have Offline Gmail enabled, you'll notice that all your mail now goes through the outbox, regardless of whether you're online or offline. This allows Gmail to capture all attachments, even if you suddenly get disconnected from network. If you're online, your mail will quickly be sent along to its destination.

If you haven't tried offline access yet, visit the Labs tab and follow these instructions to get started:

Select Enable next to Offline Gmail.
Click Save Changes.
After your browser reloads, you'll see a new "Offline" link in the upper righthand corner of the Gmail page, next to your username. Click this link to start the offline set up process and download Gears if you don't already have it.

Now that you can send attachments while offline, we'd love to see pictures of you using Gmail in unusual places while you're disconnected from the web. Pictures of you using Gmail in an airplane, igloo, or submarine are all welcome. Email your photo to hikingfan@gmail.com and we'll post the most interesting ones here.

New in Labs: Green robot icon

2009-11-18T18:24:00Z

Posted by Chad Yoshikawa, Software Engineer

Gmail chat status (those green, orange, and red bubbles) indicates if your friends are online or not. But sometimes my buddies appear green when they're not really "online online" — they just have chat open on their Android phones.

Turn on Green Robot, a new experiment in Gmail Labs, and you'll see a robot icon next to people who are currently using Android phones. In the case below, Shirley is online with Android, Nicolle R. is using regular Gmail chat, and Chris I. is currently away but also on Android. Slatka is not an angry robot — she's online with Android but currently busy.

These icons can help you decide whether to tailor your conversation to the type of device that your chat buddy is using. For example, when you know the guy on the other end is using his Android phone, you may decide to send shorter, more concise chat messages.

When your chat buddies log into Gmail, their presence icons will revert to the traditional red, green, and orange status bubbles. In addition, if your chat buddy happens to be logged into both Gmail and Android chat then the traditional Gmail status icons will be shown. Try it out and let us know what you think.

Get started with Google Sites templates

2009-11-17T05:15:00Z

Google Sites makes creating and sharing a website easy. It is powerful enough for a company intranet, yet simple enough for a family website. Today, we’re happy to simplify the site creation process even further with the introduction of the Google Sites template gallery. When you select a template from the new Sites template gallery, your new site will come setup with custom page layouts, links for navigating to each page, embedded gadgets, themes and much more.

The public template gallery is open for anyone to contribute templates, and we look forward to seeing what you create and submit. Do you have a great wedding site that you think other couples would use or have you built a club website that everyone loves? Follow these steps to submit your template to the gallery:

Open up the site you want to add to the gallery. Note: the site must be published and you must be an owner to submit the site.
Select ‘More actions’, ‘Manage site,’ ‘General’, and chose ‘Publish this site as a template.’
Choose a template name, a category, enter a description and click ‘Submit template.’
Your site template will appear in the gallery for everyone to see within hours.

We started the gallery with some initial templates, which cover a variety of uses. For example, if you're building a site for your club or association, you can get started with this template:

Or, if you're a teacher, try out the classroom template:

If you're a restaurant looking to create a website, there are restaurant templates available:

You can also use Google Sites at work to manage projects internally. Take a look at our project wiki template:

There are also pre-built templates designed specifically for families, weddings, schools, internal profiles, churches, and much more. To see all the available templates, choose "Browse the gallery for more" when creating a new Google Site. For an overview of Google Sites templates, check out this video:

If you're using Google Apps, read more about how businesses are working more efficiently with Google Sites. If you have any feedback on site templates, please let us know on the forums.

Posted by: Scott Johnston, Senior Product Manager, Google Sites

More extra storage for less

2009-11-11T02:15:00Z

Posted by Elvin Lee, Software Engineer

When Gmail launched five years ago, it came with a gigabyte of storage space. A gigabyte doesn't seem like very much any more, and now every Gmail account comes with more than seven gigs of space (and growing). Still, some people manage to use up all of this (that's a lot of email...), so for over two years we've offered the option to purchase even more storage. This extra storage acts as an overflow that you only start using when you reach the limit of your free storage, and is shared for use between Gmail and Picasa Web Albums. Picasa has always come with a gigabyte of free storage to share photos, but people need even more storage as they start taking more pictures and moving full resolution backups of their photo collection into the cloud.

While storage costs have been dropping naturally, we've also been working hard to improve our infrastructure to reduce costs even further. Today, we're dramatically lowering our prices to make extra storage more affordable. You can now buy 20 GB for only $5 a year, twice as much storage for a quarter of the old price, and enough space for more than 10,000 full resolution pictures taken with a five megapixel camera. And if you need more than 20 GB, you can purchase up to 16 terabytes!

So if you're running out of space in your overflowing inbox, or want to keep full resolution copies of thousands of photos, visit www.google.com/accounts/PurchaseStorage to see all the plans and to buy more storage.

New additions to the settings page

2009-11-10T23:25:00Z

Earlier today we made two additions to the Google Docs settings page. The first, "Where items open," lets you pick if you want items to open in a new window (how it works today) or in the same window.

A couple weeks ago, we launched "New!" and "Viewed/unviewed" indicators in the docs list which allow you to easily spot brand new and updated items. Since not everyone loves these -- shocking, I know :-) - we also added an "Update indicators" setting, which lets you turn these indicators off.

Posted by: Vijay Bangaru, Product Manager, Google Docs

Choose which messages get downloaded for offline use

2009-11-05T03:17:00Z

Posted by Maria Khomenko, Software Engineer

Like an increasing number of people these days, I like to stay productive during my flights (even those without wifi access). A long flight is a perfect opportunity to go through everything in my inbox and catch up on older mail. I use Offline Gmail in Gmail Labs to access my mail while disconnected. However, up until now, Offline Gmail heuristically picked which messages get downloaded for offline use. This meant that sometimes not enough mail from my Inbox would be available, but the Chat logs that I certainly didn't need on the flight would be there.

From now on, once you enable Offline Gmail from the Labs tab under Settings, you can choose which messages get downloaded. On the Offline tab under Settings, you'll see your current settings and be able to set how much mail you want to download from each of your labels. I chose to download everything in my Inbox and important labels, as well as recent messages from the last month from other labels.

When you hit save, Gmail will synchronize new messages you didn't have downloaded before and remove the ones you're not planning to read from your hard drive. You can always change your settings back to keep fewer or more messages later on -- fewer messages means Offline Gmail runs faster. Questions or comments? Let us know!

With Google Sites and Docs planning Thanksgiving is easy

2009-11-03T19:43:00Z

Every year families come together from all over to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday. To some people, Thanksgiving brings to mind images of family gathering around a turkey dinner and catching up over heaping servings of pumpkin pie. Others, especially the hosts and hostesses out there, worry about the stress of cooking for 20 people, getting stuck in traffic, picking up relatives from the airport and figuring out where everyone will sleep. If you fall into the second group, why not use Google Docs and Sites to help organize your Thanksgiving chaos this year?

A Google Site is a great way to let everyone know what to bring, provide directions, organize flight arrival times and even plan some post-Thanksgiving events, like football marathons or a little exercise to burn off those pumpkin pie calories.

Use a list page to split up the cooking and show your family what meals they need to prepare.

You can also embed a Google spreadsheet to keep track of everyone's arrival times and get volunteers to pick people up from the airport. You can even insert a flight arrival time gadget so you can avoid circling the airport by making sure flights aren't delayed. To find this gadget, choose 'More gadgets' from the 'Insert' menu and then search for "flight."

Adding announcements to your site will help family members get up to date information. You can display the announcements on the front page of your site, or your family can subscribe to RSS feeds so they get updates whenever there is a new announcement.

Hopefully Sites and Docs make planning your Thanksgiving a little easier this year. Happy Thanksgiving from everyone on the Google Docs and Sites teams.

Posted by: Ashley Chandler, Sites and Docs User Operations