Google Spreadsheets has recently added an interesting feature: keyboard accelerators for menus, but it only works in Chrome. You can now press Alt+F (or Ctrl-Option-F for Mac) to open the File menu. Then type one of the underlined characters to select an option. It's now much easier to use features that don't have keyboard shortcuts, just like in a native application.


Chrome is the only important desktop browser born without menus and that's probably the reason why web apps can override shortcuts like Alt+F. It's important to point out that you can use shortcuts like Alt+F and Alt+E to open Chrome's wrench, but not in Google Spreadsheets.

While Chrome's interface was so great that many other browsers used it as an inspiration, Google Docs continues to use the old-school menus from Microsoft Office 2000.

Keyboard Accelerators in Google Spreadsheets

An upcoming Google Docs update will bring a better interface for selecting paragraph styles and new features that lets you customize styles.



Google Docs will also add some new open source fonts from the Web Fonts project: Amaranth, Arvo, Dancing Script, Lobster, Merriweather, Open Sans, Philosopher, Quattrocento.


Google has recently updated the Android app for Google Docs and added offline support, while also improving the reading layout for tablets.

Update (February 6): Custom styles are now available.

{ Thanks, J. }

Google Docs Will Improve Paragraph Styles and Add More Fonts

Google Takeout supports a new service: Google Docs. Now you can use the same interface to batch export your documents.


I tried both Google Takeout and the built-in feature from Google Docs that lets you download your documents. Even if they have the same purpose, they're quite different. The Google Docs feature is more flexible: you can choose to download only spreadsheets or presentations and skip all the other documents. You can also skip the files uploaded to Google Docs and not converted to a Google Docs format (for example: PDF files, archives and video files). Google Takeout has a "configure" feature, but you can't skip one or more document types. Another subtle difference is that Google Takeout lets you export only the files that you own, while Google Docs exports all the files from your account.


How to export all your files from Google Docs? Just go to the Google Docs homepage, select one or more documents, click "More" and then "Download", click the "All items" tab, pick your favorite formats and click "Download". The process is not that intuitive and you shouldn't have to select a file to see the download option.

{ via Data Liberation Blog }

Two Ways to Export Your Google Docs