Updates: Google Docs Adds Thumbnails and Spell-check

Google has made some updates to Google Docs recently that might have a major effect on how you use it. A couple of changes were added today: Thumbnail view has been added to the Document list also spelling correction was added to the search feature.

Thumbnails View and Search Spell-check

The thumbnails view will aid in quick scanning of your documents to find what you want. If you need to switch to this view, just click the Thumbnails button on the top right of your Document list. Every document will become a small preview of the documents content in a grid view. From here, you can still favorite a document, click the thumbnail to open it, and mark it for bulk actions.

Thumbnails view becomes especially of use when you factor in Google’s sort by relevance feature, which wisely augments your search. Execute a search for the document you are looking for and switch to thumbnails view. Switch the sort mode to “Relevance” if it is not already set there and you must be able to easily scan the results and find the exact document you want. The automatic spell check also comes into play here in making it easier to locate your stuff though you spelling-challenged or just fat-fingered.

Upload Any File

A little while ago, Google announced the capability to store any file in Docs. They have now completed the roll-out of this new feature for all users. Initially, you could only upload files up to 250MB but, after getting lots of user feedback, they decided to up this limit to 1GB. Every user starts of with a maximum storage capacity of 1GB. Remember that files that can actually be converted for editing with Google Docs have lesser limits than 1GB and also don’t count in opposition to your storage limit:

Documents (up to 500KB of text)

• HTML files and plain text (.txt).

• Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx), Rich Text (.rtf), OpenDocument Text (.odt) and StarOffice (.sxw).

Presentations (up to 10MB)

• Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt, .pps).

Spreadsheets (up to 1MB)

• Comma Separated Value (.csv).

• Microsoft Excel (.xls, .xlsx) files and OpenDocument Spreadsheet (.ods).

If you need more than 1GB of storage, you can always buy additional storage for $0.25 for each GB per year, which is pretty reasonable. No more fumbling with a memory stick or trying to email big files. Simply upload to Google Docs and use the existing document sharing feature. Of course, you could also use a service like Dropbox for this, which might lose a few steams given Google’s new feature. The trouble-free fact that Google has integrated their storage in the cloud solution directly with Docs might make it a more attractive solution for business types.