Google answered one of the biggest demands from users of its popular cloud-based Docs office suite this week, with full support for the .docx and .xlsx formats used by Microsoft's Office 2007.
As reported on the official Google Docs Blog, the team behind the web-based office suite have added the support for the files to the existing – and pretty extensive – list of files that can be imported: .doc, .odt, xls, .ods, .ppt, .csv, .html, .txt, .rtf, and more.
The two files – which are used by Microsoft Word 2007 and Microsoft Excel 2007 – can be imported without the loss of any formatting information; this is in contrast to the previously recommended solution, which was to save files in an older format specifically for use with Google Docs.
While the use of the new file types is pretty straightforward – simply upload the file as normal, and Google's conversion engine will figure out the format and get the file working – integration with Google's Gmail web-mail service is still missing, although should be added soon. Existing integration for other file types support by Google Docs allows the files to be imported directly from Gmail.
Sadly for presentation mavens, support for the .pptx file format used by Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 is still missing: the only way to get these files into Google Docs is to save as the older PowerPoint 2003 .ppt format, possibly losing some formatting information along the way.
What major feature would you like to see Google work on next? Perhaps Docs is still missing support for your particular favourite offline wordprocessor or spreadsheet package? Is there major functionality missing that's preventing you from moving all your documents to the cloud, or do you just trust Google less than your own hard drive? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
As reported on the official Google Docs Blog, the team behind the web-based office suite have added the support for the files to the existing – and pretty extensive – list of files that can be imported: .doc, .odt, xls, .ods, .ppt, .csv, .html, .txt, .rtf, and more.
The two files – which are used by Microsoft Word 2007 and Microsoft Excel 2007 – can be imported without the loss of any formatting information; this is in contrast to the previously recommended solution, which was to save files in an older format specifically for use with Google Docs.
While the use of the new file types is pretty straightforward – simply upload the file as normal, and Google's conversion engine will figure out the format and get the file working – integration with Google's Gmail web-mail service is still missing, although should be added soon. Existing integration for other file types support by Google Docs allows the files to be imported directly from Gmail.
Sadly for presentation mavens, support for the .pptx file format used by Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 is still missing: the only way to get these files into Google Docs is to save as the older PowerPoint 2003 .ppt format, possibly losing some formatting information along the way.
What major feature would you like to see Google work on next? Perhaps Docs is still missing support for your particular favourite offline wordprocessor or spreadsheet package? Is there major functionality missing that's preventing you from moving all your documents to the cloud, or do you just trust Google less than your own hard drive? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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