Quickly find and insert special characters into Google Docs, Slides, and Drawings

Quickly find and insert special characters into Google Docs, Slides, and Drawings

Posted: 26 Aug 2014 10:14 AM PDT

We have launched a new version of the special character picker in Google Docs, Slides, and Drawings, making it easier for people to find characters and symbols—like arrows, shapes, or non-Latin characters—to insert into their content.

The new picker now supports keyword search as well as free form input, so editors can draw the symbol that they have in mind and the picker will return available characters that resemble the drawing.

To add special characters, click the Insert menu and select Special characters.

Release track:

Rapid release, with Scheduled release coming in two weeks

Changes to legacy Google Drive URLs

Changes to legacy Google Drive URLs

Posted: 26 Aug 2014 10:34 AM PDT

As initially mentioned last month, in line with the new Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides home screens we announced in June, we’ll now start redirecting docs.google.com to point to the new Google Docs home screen instead of to Google Drive. You can always get to Google Drive by going to drive.google.com.

Those with docs.google.com bookmarked as a way to access Google Drive should update their links accordingly. We will be showing a notification to users in both Drive and Docs to remind them of this change.

Release track:

Rapid release (gradual rollout over the coming weeks), followed by rollout to Scheduled release domains two weeks after completion of rollout to Rapid release domains

New available contacts tab for Hangouts in Gmail

New available contacts tab for Hangouts in Gmail

Posted: 26 Aug 2014 02:47 PM PDT

With this launch, we are introducing a new tab to Hangouts in Gmail that shows a list of a person’s contacts sorted by availability, making it easier to see which contacts are currently online.

Available contacts (those with the green circle) will show in an alpha-ordered list first, followed by a second alpha-ordered list of unavailable contacts. Contacts can be hidden or pinned to the top of the contacts list regardless of their availability.

To access the new contacts tab, click on the person icon on the bottom of the Hangouts section.

Release track:

Rapid release, with Scheduled release coming in two weeks