Optical Character Recognition (OCR) in 34 languages

Last June, we introduced the ability to upload documents into Google Docs using Optical Character Recognition (OCR). OCR analyzes images and PDF files, typically produced by a scanner (or the camera of a mobile phone), extracts text and some formatting and allows you to edit the document in Google Docs.

We’ve gotten a lot of feedback on this feature, and one of the biggest requests was to add support for additional languages. Today, we’re happy to announce that we’ve added support for 29 additional character sets, including those used in most European languages, Russian, Chinese Simplified and some other Asian languages. See the upload page for the full list.

How does it work? When uploading your images and PDF files using Google Docs, tell us what language your documents are in:

Hit upload, and we’ll use this information to search for the right characters in your file. As usual, you will get best results with sharp, high-resolution images or PDF files. This update will also result in an improvement in OCR quality for languages that we’ve supported previously (English, French, Italian, German, Spanish). We’ve also made improvements to the way we import formatting from your documents, and are now doing a better job in preserving font and alignment information.

We’ll keep adding languages and at the same time will continue to improve speed and accuracy for the existing ones. In the meantime, we hope you take advantage of this new way to import your data into Google Docs.

Posted by Jaron Schaeffer, Software Engineer

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What’s new in Docs: Mobile editing in 45 languages, printing in spreadsheets

Last year, we launched mobile editing in English and more page sizes in Google documents. We’re excited to announce that we’ve expanded on both of these features this week by adding 44 more mobile editing languages and more print sizes to Google spreadsheets.

Mobile editing now in 45 languages
You can now edit your documents on the go in 45 languages on Android with Froyo (version 2.2) and on iOS devices (version 3.0+) including the iPad. Learn more at mobile.google.com/docs.

More print sizes
Following in the footsteps of last week’s hide gridlines update, there are now eight more print sizes in Google spreadsheets, including tabloid, statement, executive, folio and A3, A5, B4 and B5.

As always, feedback in the comments and on the forums is appreciated.

Posted by: Carmen Wilkinson, Software Engineer

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Template updated: 2011 College Basketball Tournament Bracket

For all you serious basketball fans out there or for those that just want to follow along, the 2011 College Basketball Tournament Bracket template is a great way to share your picks with your friends.


Other Google teams are getting into the basketball spirit. From getting Realtime updates to exploring 3D venues on Google Maps, there is something for every basketball fan at google.com/collegebasketball2011.

Posted by: Haluk Tunali, Software Engineer

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Multiple chart ranges and hidden sheets in Spreadsheets

Having control over what you can graph and which sheets you can see at any given time is important. Today we added the ability to chart multiple ranges and hide sheets in Google spreadsheets.

Chart Multiple Ranges
In charts, you are now able to graph multiple ranges. Take this chart depicting time vs distanced traveled.

You can now add extra ranges by clicking on “Select ranges...” and “add another range.” You can also manually add new ranges separated by commas like “Charts!B5:B12, Charts!D5:D12, Charts!F5:F12.”

In this example, here is what the chart with the above data selected looks like.

Hidden Sheets
We’re also introducing the ability to hide your sheets. You can click on a sheet tab and select “hide sheet” to remove a sheet from view.

The sheet can still be seen in the list of sheets and any editor can click on this sheet to bring this back to view. Sheets can also be accessed from the Hidden sheets option in the View menu. Learn more about sheet hiding here.

We hope you enjoy these features, let us know what you think in the forums.

Posted by: DJ Lee, Staff Software Engineer

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Introducing discussions in Google Docs

When we launched the new Google Docs last April, one of the big changes was moving comments to the sidebar and letting people reply to comments. Today, we’re updating comments in Google Docs to facilitate rapid and seamless discussions and integrate with email in an intuitive way. Since there are a number of significant improvements, this update is only available for newly created documents for now.







To start, we’ve improved the discussion flow by adding ownership and edit rights to individual comments. Each comment now has a timestamp and profile picture.

Google Docs doesn’t force you to delete comments. Instead, you can resolve comments to remove them from the visible document and view them later by clicking the discussions button at the top of any document. You can even re-open comments from here.

We know you can’t watch all of your important documents all day to see if there are any suggestions, which is why we’ve integrated comments with your inbox to facilitate more rapid and responsive communication. You can now add someone to a discussion with an @mention. For example, typing @eddy@altostrat.com in a discussion will send a notification email to Eddy with the text of your comment.

Eddy gets a message in her inbox with your question or comment.

She can easily click through to open the document itself to respond, or simply reply to the email.



The reply will show up in the document as soon as the email is sent.



To turn off email notifications for a document, just select Mute updates from this comment at the bottom of any email or select Discussion notification settings... from the Discussions drop down.

We've been using this next-generation commenting system inside Google for several months and have seen it make the feedback cycle shorter and get more people involved. The combination of added structure and intuitive email integration have really given life to the discussions that surround our documents, and we're excited for this new feature to do the same for you.



Discussions will be available over the next few days to all users with personal Google Accounts as well as to Google Apps customers on the Rapid Release track. Please note that improved comments are only available in new documents at this time so if you want to try it out make sure to create a new document. The comments you’ve created in existing document won’t be changed.



We’re excited to hear what you think so let us know on in the comments.



Posted by: Nick Cooper, Software Engineer

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