Sunday, August 1, 2010

Clever Google docs and File converters


I'll be happy to make these unnecessary changes to this irrelevant document.

Dilbert


(cartoon created by Scott Adams, American cartoonist, b.1957)


What a nice surprise Google docs is. We're often apprehensive over the plaintive cry for help when documents at the Internet stations can't be opened, so this little gem could be the answer when the usual "tricks" fail. While the image from our "test" document got lost somewhere along the transfer trail, and some of the fonts and formatting changed, it wasn't too dramatic a change, and didn't affect the information itself. We are pretty used to having to relearn formulas and formats when new versions of Word, Excel, etc appear, so this isn't too different. I tried another quite large document, with lots of columns, and was quite satisfied with how it came through. There wasn't a lot of change apparent, other than the loss of some 'bullets' - and its' quite straightforward to delete documents, with a nice "safety" option in case you decided you didn't really want to delete! All in all, this is a very nice tool, quite straightforward to use, and one I will endeavour to put to work. I haven't yet looked at any of the other file converters, nor revisited Zoho, but just knowing these tools are out there is enough for me at this point. I fear I'm approaching my information overload point, and need to stop, take a breath, and digest the bounty. Google continues it's march to conquer us all - but at least we can play and learn, and have some fun along the way - or if it really gets too much, you could try this!

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