Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Merge cells vertically in Google spreadsheets

Merge cells vertically in Google spreadsheets

There are many times when you want to format your spreadsheets in a certain way to make your data easier to read and understand. Starting today, we’ve extended the merge functionality to let you create vertical merges across several rows of data.

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. Using vertical merges, you can assign headers to sets of rows. Simply select the set of cells you’d like to merge, then click on the down arrow next to the merge icon, and select Merge vertically.


In the NFL spreadsheet, you’ll see that some of the team names don’t fit on one line in the width of the cells of Column C.

To improve the formatting, select the cells across all the rows of teams in the AFC (rows 2-17) and 2 columns (C and D) and click Merge horizontally. You’ll have 16 merged cells that span 2 columns for better formatting.


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!


To undo a merge action, select a merged cell and click Unmerge in the drop-down menu.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

New look for Google Docs and Sites now rolling out

New look for Google Docs and Sites now rolling out


Posted: 03 Oct 2011 02:58 PM PDT



Previously available as an opt-in option, the new look for Google Docs and Sites is now rolling out to all rapid release domains. You’ll see clean menus and toolbars, prominent action buttons, and colorful presence that pops when you’re editing with others.



Some of the changes:

- We made it clearer that your document is always saved, by showing “Saving...” right after you make a change and then “All changes saved” once it’s fully saved.

- We added an icon to the Share button so you can tell if your document is shared at a glance.

- If you’re looking for options that were previously under the Share button (e.g. “Email as attachment...”), you can now find these in the File menu.

- By default, the documents list automatically fits a comfortable number of documents on your screen (large desktop monitors show more, smaller laptop screens show fewer). We also added density options to give you more control.



If you’re not quite ready for the new look, choose Help > Use the classic look (or in the gear menu, for some products). We’ll support the classic look for at least a few more weeks, but encourage you to use the new look.



Release track:

Rapid*



Editions included:

Google Apps, Google Apps for Business, Government and Education



Languages included:

All languages supported by Google Docs and Sites