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New Google Docs feature: Merging spreadsheet cells vertically

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Those of you that crunch numbers using Google Docs: The company has just added a cool new feature to the spreadsheets editor – merging cells vertically. In addition to the existing horizontal merging functionality, this new feature allows for some pretty complex layouts. Just drag the set of cells, hit the down arrow next to the merge icon and select Merge vertically. You can also assign headers to sets of rows. Why would anyone want to merge cells vertically? Google offers an example:

In the spirit of the NFL season, let’s say you want to host a football tournament for your friends. To make it easier for them to cast their votes on the winning team, you organize the NFL teams by conference and division in a Google spreadsheet. After applying vertical merges to all of the conference and division headers and horizontal merges across the team names in each conference, you’re ready to share with your friends for the tournament!


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Box.net and Google Docs share love in the cloud

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Box has added today the ability to create and edit Google Docs inside of their service. The popular cloud storage solution favored by six million people would previously require folks to create documents at the Google Docs website or using a desktop program before uploading them to the Box cloud. Being Google Docs, other users can also collaborate with you right inside the Box service. Once done,  you can share files with your other computers and those you are working with. Check out these new features in a short clip after the break.

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The McClatchy Company, third-largest newspaper publisher in the US, goes Google Apps

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Listen, the recession has obviously helped Google Apps hit the ground running, but the number of high-profile organizations adopting the Google-hosted suite of productivity web apps is growing at an alarming rate (if you’re Microsoft, that is). Lately, Google has won over the #1 hotel chain and today we learn that The McClatchy Company, the country’s third-largest newspaper publisher, has made the switch.

“Historically, each newspaper has operated independently with on-premise software and their own various business operation departments and specifically IT. To date, our technology has been both destandardized and decentralized”, says Terry Geiger, director of corporate IT with The McClatchy Company. Blame that on Microsoft’s technology, he says…


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Some spot Offline mode in Google Docs

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After Google pulled life support on its free and open source browser extension called Gears, many road warriors were left scratching their head because by doing so Google had also killed the useful offline mode in Google Docs. The company relied on Gears to add features to web apps that were not possible in HTML at the time, like the ability for web apps to cache data and maintain operation without continuous network connectivity. Google has been promising to re-write the offline functionality in HTML5 ever since. While no announcement has been made yet, the Google Operating System blog spotted a black status bar in Google Docs labeled “Offline Docs” and links to switch manually between online and offline modes. This means that the search company is internally testing the feature and will probably make an announcement soon.


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Up next for Google Docs: Cloud Print, Cloud Connect improvements, .TXT previews, native Android editing

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Native editing is coming to the Google Docs app for Android, in addition to “lots and lots of improvements”

Members of the Google Docs team have revealed some interesting new features slated for an upcoming revision of Google’s online office suite which is due soon. Product managers Scott Johnston, Jeff Harris and Ronald Ho plus engineer DJ Lee and community manager Teresa Wu described some of the new features in a Q&A session with Reddit readers (via Business Insider). For starters, .txt previews are coming back to Google Docs. Next, cloud printing via Cloud Print will be supported across platforms and through browsers other than Google’s own Chrome. Go past the break for more new stuff, including Cloud Connect, offline editing and Android app improvements.

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