LostInTechnology

Top 5 Google Docs Tips

Posted on 29. Dec, 2009 by UzEE in Internet Tools

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In the recent past, we have seen more and more cloud computing services pop up, and they have been getting consistently better. Of course the concept isn’t new, in fact about 30 years ago, the same approach was used by most enterprises which would use dump terminals to access computer servers for all their computing needs. The only difference now is the availability and widespread use of the Internet. We can now access and use our data from anywhere in the world.

The idea has gained so much momentum that entire Operating Systems dedicated for cloud computing have started to emerge, like JoliCloud and Google Chrome OS. The major characteristic of these operating systems is the fact that they don’t store anything locally on your machine and rely on Web Applications for all the processing work.

This is where applications like Google Docs come into play. For those who don’t know, Google Docs is a fully featured online productivity suite which is available to anyone with a Google account. You can create, edit and share documents, presentations, spreadsheets and even web forms in just about any format available. And the fun doesn’t stop there. You can actually use a ton of different tricks and features which aren’t usually visible to be even more productive. Here is my quick list of 5 top tips and tricks you can use Google Docs for.

Create Online Surveys

Collecting data online can be a tedious task especially if you don’t own your own domain and hosting. Fortunately for you, Google Docs allows us to create data collection forms with a wide range of data input fields are available. You can create anything from a simple registration form for an event to a complete online survey about a product in a couple of minutes. And you can even embed them in your own website.

Share Entire Folders

One of the strong points of Google Docs is its collaboration features. You can easily share your files with your colleagues and friends and work together on the same data. A built in chat client also helps you communicate as you make alterations. But a powerful new feature recently introduced lets you share entire folders of documents. So now you can easily manage and share your office spreadsheets with your coworkers while another folder containing family photo slideshows can easily be shared with the ones you love – all in one simple step.

Convert Between Formats

One of my most favorite uses of Google Docs is its powerful document conversion features – which aren’t actually visible. There aren’t any tricks required here either. Just upload a compatible file (MS Office, Office 2007, OpenOffice, PDF, RTF, and the list goes on) you want to convert. Open the file in the document editor and select File > Download as > and the format you wish to convert the file into. And that’s it, the document will be downloaded in your new format.

Publish to Blogs

Not only does Google Docs allow you to share your documents with coworkers, you can also share them with the world. Publishing a document makes it visible to the public, but it is still hosted on Google’s servers. An interesting feature of Google Docs which goes beyond this step is that it also lets you publish the document to almost any blogging platform. So you can actually use the rich document creation features of Google Docs as a blog publishing platform.

Google Docs Viewer

One of the most useful features of Google Docs is its ability to let you view documents online without needing to download them on your machine first. All you have to do is navigate to docs.google.com/viewer and enter the URL of the document you want to view. It can be any of the supported formats, and Google Docs would open that document for you. It is extremely useful when you want to open PDF files which are in hundreds of MBs. Google Docs can open them almost instantly.

I hope these tips were useful for you. If you want to share tips of your own then please feel free to drop them in the comments section below.

Article By Uzair Sajid (UzEE), a technologist and a freelance blogger who also authors The Technopath.

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Tags: docs, Google, google docs tips, google docs tricks, tips, top google docs tips, top google docs tricks