It was a busy year for the Google Workspace team and there were a lot of changes and improvements that came out during the course of the year. As there have been so many improvements, in this part I will cover Sheets, Docs, and Slides, and in the second part I will cover the improvements to Meet, Forms, Calendar, and Sites. For more details about the improvements, click on the headers to take you to the original Google announcements.
Google Sheets
Range name box
A range name box has been added, located to the left of the formula bar, to improve navigation in Google Sheets. Previously, active cells were only indicated by a blue outline and could be located by scrolling or using the arrow keys. Now, you can use the range name box to jump directly to coordinates and named ranges in a sheet.
Additionally, this box provides a dropdown menu to easily access, manage, and create new named ranges in the sheet.
More chart customizations
More line and fill customization options added for series and series items. You can now modify:
- Color
- Opacity
- Line dash styles
- Line thickness
For column-shaped series, we’ve added the ability to add and style borders, a highly-requested feature.
Navigating comments
Now in Google Sheets, you can:
- Review comments and conversation threads in a sidebar.
- Apply filters to find the most relevant comments for getting your work done when a document is highly collaborative.
- Page through comment threads in a document in the comment overlay.
Selecting multiple tabs
Now you can select multiple tabs in Google Sheets and perform basic actions on the selection (such as moving the tabs together, deleting, duplicating, copying, coloring, or hiding).
Smart compose
Smart Compose saves you time by cutting back on repetitive writing, reducing the chance of spelling and grammatical errors, and suggesting relevant contextual phrases. Now, Smart Compose is available in comments for Google Slides, Sheets, and Drawings.
Customize theme colors
Now it’s easier to find and select theme colors in Sheets and Slides.
The theme colors section is now at the top color picker, and the “theme” placeholder has now been enhanced to show the name of the theme. Now you can easily identify your company brand and use the theme colors of the brand.
Intelligent suggestions for formulas & functions
You’ll now see in-line, sequential, context-aware suggestions for formulas and functions when working with data in Google Sheets.
Formula suggestions will make it easier to write new formulas accurately and help make data analysis quicker and easier.
Simply begin inserting a formula in Sheets—suggestions will be automatically displayed and as you continue to type. You can view additional incremental suggestions in the drop-down menu.
Menu changes
The menus in Google Sheets were updated to make it easier to locate the most commonly-used features.
In this update:
- Some features were reorganized and added to more intuitive locations (for example, you can now freeze a row or column from the right-click menu)
- Icons have been added to help you locate features more easily
- Changes are across all menus, including File, Edit, View, Insert, Format, Date, Tools, Extensions, Help, and Accessibility.
Richer information with people chips
You can now add people chips directly into a Google Sheet. These chips allow you to quickly view more information about colleagues or contacts, including their location, job title, and contact information. You can also take actions such as booking a meeting, starting a Chat, sending an email, and more, directly from a smart chip.
Google Docs
Smart compose and autocorrect in comments
Smart compose and spelling autocorrect are now available when adding comments. These features help users compose comments quickly and with confidence by reducing the chance of spelling and grammatical errors and suggesting relevant contextual phrases.
Out of office reply in comments
In Google Docs, you’ll now see out of office information when replying to or mentioning other users in a comment.
When mentioning a single user in a new comment or thread, you’ll see the OOO banner and information on when they plan to return.
New citation options
Now you can add these four new citation source types in Google Docs:
- Film
- TV Series
- TV Episode
- Miscellaneous
This will make writing academic papers easier, since you won’t have to copy citations from other tools. The four new citation source types come in addition to the types you already have available, including books, websites, journal articles, and newspaper articles.
Show editors provide more context
You can now view richer information on the edit history of a particular range of content in Google Docs. Simply highlight and right-click on a range of text and select “Show Editors” from the dropdown menu. Here, you can view a list of editors and their latest edit along with time stamps. You’ll also have the option to open the Version History of the document.
Smart chips for files, meetings, checklists
In Google Docs you can now:
- Insert smart chips for Google Docs, Sheets, Slides files, other Google Drive files, and Calendar events
- Create checklists
- Insert links more easily with intelligent suggestions in the insert link dialog
Images above or behind text
You can now position an image in front of or behind text in Google Docs. Additionally, this formatting will be preserved when importing or exporting documents from Microsoft Word.
You’ll see the new option for positioning an image above or below text within the image options sidebar and in the image toolbar when clicking directly on an image.
Smart reply in comments
Smart Reply in Google Docs saves you time replying to comments in Docs by suggesting relevant replies.
Smart Reply suggestions appear below the reply box on comment threads in English. You can choose a suggested reply or write your own.
View embedded Office files
You can now view embedded Microsoft Office files in your documents when you’re working with Office files in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides.. This feature allows you to:
- View the files in preview mode,
- Copy an embedded file directly to Drive, or download it.
Add to Docs with universal @ menu
A universal insertion menu has been added to easily add things like tables and images, in addition to smart chips, directly in Google Docs. Simply type “@”, and you’ll see a list of recommended files, people, meetings, as well as different content elements and formats to insert into your work.
Request and review documents approval
This allows you to request and review formal approvals on Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides. Once requested, approvers can approve, reject, add comments, or edit the document in response.
More ways to customize tables
New ways to customize tables in Google Docs have been added. You can now:
- Pin a table header row to repeat on each page
- Designate that a row should not be split across pages
- Quickly add, and arrange columns and rows
- Sorting tables to better organize data.
- Use a new table sidebar to manage table properties
Google Slides
Locate source video or audio file
It’s now easier to find the original source file for Google Drive-stored video or audio files embedded in a Google Slides presentation. Users can click the new ‘link to Drive’ button on an embedded video or audio file to quickly open the source file in Drive. This is useful for checking access on a file before sharing a presentation more broadly.
Improved presenter bar
When presenting, you’ll see options for:
- Selecting the previous or next slide,
- Select any slide from the picker,
- The three-dot overflow menu, which will open options for opening speaker notes, auto play, caption preferences, and more.
Master view renamed Theme Builder
The “Master” view in Google Slides has been renamed to “Theme Builder”. This change better communicates the benefits: to help users quickly customize the font, color, and layout customization for their current theme, ensuring a consistent experience throughout the presentation.
Image placeholders
Now when you create a theme in Slides, you can add image placeholders to your layouts. Slides editors can then easily replace these image placeholders with the desired images. This new feature should improve your team’s workflow efficiency, design quality, and ease of formatting.
Chat view side-by-side with Slides
In Google Chat, you can now open and edit a Slide presentation in a side-by-side view. By enabling you and your collaborators to directly edit presentations without leaving Chat
Customize theme colors
The theme colors section is now at the top color picker, and the “theme” placeholder has now been enhanced to show the name of the theme. Now you can easily identify your company brand and use the theme colors of the brand.
New viewing interface on iOS
To allow you to view more information at once, you can now:
- Scroll through a vertical stream of slides,
- Pinch to zoom to get a closer look,
- Easily switch between editing, presenting, or casting content.
Present button renamed Slideshow
The “Present” button in Slides now says “Slideshow.” It’s hoped this makes it clearer when you are beginning a slide show, and when you are sharing your screen in Meet.
Filmstrip now collapsable
In Google Slides, editors can now collapse or expand the filmstrip as needed. Collapsing the filmstrip expands the current slide view for more focused editing.
And there’s more! Check out part 2 where I summarise the improvements to Meet, Forms, Calendar, and Sites.
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