
Google updates Docs, Sheets and Slides with new collaboration features - janober
https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/16/google-updates-docs-sheets-and-slides-with-new-collaboration-features
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scrumper
> To be fair, this may be useful whenever you want to save a canonical version
> of a document, though I’m not sure this was near the top of most-requested G
> Suite features.

You're dead wrong there. Document version control with explicit checkpoints
has been a major missing feature since Google introduced the change history.
Its absence meant that you had a platform which combined the speed, stability,
and interactivity of a heavy web-based app with the retro delight of managing
multiple copies of the same file with names like "Version 1.3-final-
beforeSandrasTweaks-APPROVED-legaltosignoff", only stored in the cloud with no
central place to keep track of them all.

This feature, if it's what I think it is, has been a long time coming and very
welcome for it.

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yazr
How about improving Google DOc's screen utilization? On a typical wide
monitor, half the screen is taken up with the OS taskbar, Chrome's menus,
Doc's menu, the doc paper margin, etc, etc

Its horrible even with full-screen mode

~~~
sdm
You can hide both Google Doc's menu (the double up arrow button on the far
right of the toolbar) and the ruler (under the View menu). Then when you go
full screen it's just the toolbar at the top -- which is not bad in my mind,
but yes it would be better if you could hide the toolbar too.

~~~
crazygringo
You can. It's literally "View > Full Screen". (The Docs menu, not the browser
menu.)

And if you combine that with your browser's full screen mode... all you see is
100% document.

Perfect for when you want total concentration on writing.

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ErikVandeWater
Related question: Has anyone here used Dropbox Paper and Google Docs? How do
they compare?

~~~
sratner
Just started using Paper, and I really like it so far, especially for
documents with high degree of collaboration / cross-referencing like meeting
notes and project plans (person and document mentions, hashtags, date tags,
etc). Editing experience is also solid in Firefox, which is more than I can
say for Google Docs. Markdown auto-styling is a nice feature for me as a
coding guy, but that's a matter of preference.

My biggest gripe with Docs, though, is that documents are impossible to find
(ha!). Sharing does not seem to preserve folder structure, and I can never get
relevant search results for some reason. I am yet to discover if this is
implemented better by Dropbox.

~~~
eagsalazar2
Yeah google's insistence on search for docs (over making organizing into
folders easy) is really stupid. I agree this is the #1 worst feature of docs.

#2. Can't use custom fonts, #3. In drawings, paste always pastes where the
item was copied from which gets really irritating when you are trying to paste
something you copied from the other side of a large drawing, #4. No embedding
one type of doc into another

~~~
crazygringo
Curious what would make organizing into folders easier?

From what I can tell it's literally drag-and-drop, no different from any other
GUI filesystem. It has search _too_ , but not instead?

Files and folders that are shared with you show up by default only in your
"Shared with me" folder, but you can still drag them anywhere into your own
folder structure in Drive, and they work like a shortcut.

~~~
sratner
>Files and folders that are shared with you show up by default only in your
"Shared with me" folder

This here is exactly the problem; it makes folders useless in a team setting.
A colleague creates a document and files it under "Project
Name/Engineering/Architecture/". She then shares it with me, we have a bit of
a chat about it, and move on. A week later, I try to find said document, but
it is not in "Project Name/Engineering/Architecture/". Was I supposed to file
it there myself? What about the other ten people it was shared with?

My "Shared with me" folder has a thousand items and no useful structure.

~~~
fmorel
There are "Team Drives" now which give a shared file/folder structure to files
shared between a team of people.

~~~
sratner
Good to know. Looks like this is now a feature of "G Suite Business".
[https://support.google.com/a/answer/6034782](https://support.google.com/a/answer/6034782)

