U-M Google Updates

Google has announced they are releasing three new features in Google Sheets to help you format and work with your data easier.

These features include:

• Remove duplicates
• Trim whitespace​
• Use compatible spreadsheet shortcuts

Remove duplicates

You can now use this tool to easily remove duplicate values from your sheet, instead of manually finding and removing them.

To remove duplicates from a range of data:

• Select a range of data in your spreadsheet
• From the toolbar, select Data > Remove duplicates. In the dialogue box, you’ll see your selected range of data.
• Select Remove duplicates. You’ll see an additional dialogue box that details how many duplicates were removed from your dataset.

Trim whitespace

Occasionally when you add data to a spreadsheet, it may not be in the format you want. Now, you can easily keep your spreadsheet standardized by using the trim whitespace feature to remove any leading, trailing, or excessive whitespace from a cell or array of data.

To trim whitespace:

• Select a cell or range of data that contains whitespace on your spreadsheet
• From the toolbar, select Data > Trim whitespace​
• You’ll then see a dialogue box that details how many cells had whitespace that was removed.

Compatible spreadsheet shortcuts

You can now use popular keyboard shortcuts you may know from other spreadsheet applications in Google Sheets.

To enable compatible keyboard shortcuts:

• Users can access keyboard shortcuts by going to Help > Keyboard shortcuts.
• From here, you can see a list of keyboard shortcuts and their corresponding functions.

• At the bottom of the webpage, you can enable compatible spreadsheet shortcuts.
• You can click View compatible shortcuts at the bottom right of the webpage to see a complete list of all newly available shortcuts.

According to Google, these features will start to roll out on May 22 and may take up to 3 days to reach all users.

As a result of user feedback, Google is now introducing improvements to how you organize and find files in Team Drives. These improvements include the ability to:

• Hide Team Drives on web and mobile

You may have a long list of Team Drives quickly accumulating in your Drive left-hand panel. Now, you can hide a Team Drive when one is no longer relevant to you, like a completed project or event. From your list of Team Drives, right-click on the one you want to hide. Select the Hide Team Drive option from the list, located next to the slashed eye icon.  

To find your hidden Team Drives, navigate to your Team Drive homepage within drive.umich.edu by selecting Team Drives in the left-hand panel. In the upper right-hand corner adjacent to the “Team Drives” header, select Hidden Team Drives.  You can restore your hidden Team Drive by right-clicking it and selecting Unhide Team Drive next to the open eye icon.

To navigate back to your unhidden folders, select Back to Team Drives from the same upper right-hand location.

• Search by file creator in Team Drive

Often you remember the name of the person that created the content, instead of where it might be located. People can search for My Drive files by the owner, and now Team Drive allows that too. This feature enables you to search by “creator” for files located in a Team Drive.

In the Google Drive web interface, to search for files originally created in a Team Drive by a specific user, use creator: email address (e.g., creator: [email protected]) in the search bar at the top of the page.

According to Google, gradual rollout of these features began on April 22 but may take up to 15 days for feature visibility to our domain.

Interested in our latest updates about Google G Suite at U-M? Check out the Google Service Updates page.

Google is incorporating new scheduling features into Calendar, making it quick and easy to find time with others. You can add rooms, a location, a video conference, and add a meeting description without having to click into “More options.”

You’ll see several changes when creating a meeting such as:

• Peek at calendars and automatically add guests:

  Now, when you add a calendar in the Search for people box, you can temporarily view coworkers’ calendars. Creating a new event then automatically adds those people as guests to your meeting and can suggest a title for the meeting, as well.

• More fields in the creation pop-up dialog:

  The Guests, Rooms, Location, Conferencing, and Description fields are now editable directly in the meeting creation pop-up dialog. Once you add your coworkers’ calendars, they’ll load in the background, making it easier and faster to find an available time for everyone in your party.

  

Google has decided to rename “Team Drives” to “shared drives”. This will not affect functionality; it is only a name change. In the Google Drive web app, in the left side panel, “Team Drives” will become “Shared drives”. The names of the drives and their content should not change.

File paths of content linked from Drive File Stream—like shortcuts, scripts, etc.—will need to be updated to “shared drives” as soon as possible after May 31, 2019 to avoid broken paths. For example:

• D:\Team Drives\ITS INF AO PROJ Google\Meeting Notes
  Will need to be changed to…
• D:\shared drives\ITS INF AO PROJ Google\Meeting Notes

According to Google, this change will begin to roll out to iOS on May 21, to Android on May 28, to Drive File Stream on May 31, and to the web app on June 3. Google states that feature visibility will take 1-3 days. 

The monthly U-M Google Summaries inform campus of Google releases for Core Apps as well as the Non-Core Apps (those that are not part of the G Suite for Education agreement). We communicate important information on Core Apps throughout the month. Core and Non-Core Apps are listed on the G Suite website.

Core Apps:

• Take action faster with customizable swipe actions in Gmail on iOS

You can now customize the actions you can take when swiping on an email in Gmail on your iOS device.

Swipe actions can be set up to do any of the following actions: Archive, Trash, Mark as read/unread, Snooze, and Move to.

You can access the swipe configuration settings by going into the Gmail iOS app and navigating to Settings > Swipe actions, and choosing the swipe options that work best for you.

• Enhance presentations in Slides with audio

Google has added the ability for users to embed MP3 and WAV audio files from Drive into Slides.

To insert an audio file into Slides:

• Insert > Audio and select from your audio files in Drive
• Hover over the icon to see playback controls

Once the audio file is inserted, you can find audio settings by clicking Format options in the toolbar. From there, you can set playback options, volume, and looping. You can also hide the audio icon or replace it with an image of your choice.

The ability to add an audio file into Slides is currently only available on desktop, though audio will play on all platforms.

• Easily customize theme colors in Slides

Soon you will be able to edit the theme colors for your presentations in Slides, making it easier to set up a new theme or apply bulk color changes to existing presentations. To do this, go to any color picker dropdown and click the edit button for your Theme color palette. In the Theme color sidebar, select a color from the dropdown to begin editing.

• RSVP to Calendar events from forwarded invitations

Now, if guests of a Calendar event have been granted permission to invite others, recipients of forwarded invitation emails can RSVP to the event, adding them to the event as a guest. This eliminates the step of having to go into the event in Calendar to invite additional guests.

• Avoid double-booking rooms in Calendar

Rooms will no longer accept two Calendar events that overlap in time. Previously, if an event was created directly on a room’s calendar by someone with permissions, the room would accept this meeting even if another event had already added this room for that same time. Now, if the room has already accepted another meeting, creating a new event at the same time on the room’s calendar will result in a room decline of this conflicting meeting.

• Work smarter in Sheets with several new features for objects

Google has added new features and tools to create more compelling and stylized reports in Sheets:

• Guides
  You can use guides to help you align, size, and position various objects within your sheets. Guides are also helpful in making sure multiple objects within the same sheet are in proportion to one another.
• Multi-Selecting Objects
  To select multiple charts, drawings, and images to move, resize, or delete in bulk, hold down the Control or Shift key and select.

• Enhanced Pivot Table Insertion
  When adding a new pivot table, you now have the option to either place it in a new sheet or in a custom location on an existing sheet.
• To create a new pivot table, go to Data > Pivot Table and select a data range.
• In the dialogue box, under Insert to, select New sheet or Existing sheet, and click Create.

• Copy and paste images into Sheets
  You can now copy images from other websites and paste them directly into your sheet. Simply right-click on an image and select Copy, then in Sheets right-click and select Paste to insert the image over the grid.
• Formula backed charts inserted from Answers
  Now, when you use Sheets Explore to create charts, the charts you insert from the Q&A feature (Answers) will be backed by formulas. This means that charts will automatically update if the underlying data changes, ensuring you always have a fresh chart with the latest information.

According to Google, these features began rollout on May 2nd and may take up to three days for feature visibility.

• Duplicate larger sites in new Google Sites

Google has made it possible to copy much larger sites in order to help users efficiently copy their existing sites, allowing them to back up their work, iterate on previous sites, or create ‘templates’ to start new sites.

To make a copy with the improved site copy, open a site in the new Google Sites, click More > Duplicate site.

Previously Communicated:

• New accessibility settings for Docs, Sheets, and Slides!
• Caution: Only use Google apps with U-M Google
• Reminder: Google Classic Site Creation Ending
• It’s now easier to insert images in cells in Google Sheets!
• Write now, send later with Schedule send in Gmail
• Threading changes in Gmail conversation view