April 8, 2008

Advanced Search and Custom Views in Google Docs

Google Docs added an option to perform advanced searches. You can now restrict your search to the file's name or its content, select the sharing type, search only inside a folder or only for files modified in the past week. The interface is not very intuitive and it's very similar to Gmail's advanced search. Fortunately, you can save the search and create a new view that's accessible from the sidebar or from the small drop-down placed next to the search box.

The saved searches are actually custom views that could help you find documents faster. Create custom views for published documents, documents that are shared with you, starred spreadsheets or for documents last opened in the past 7 days.



Custom views could be a great addition to Gmail, while Google Docs lacks the powerful operators from Gmail. The list view from Google Docs looks more and more like a file explorer and should be used for any kind of files, not just for documents, spreadsheets and presentations.
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2 comments:

  1. AnonymousApril 9, 2008 at 2:44 AM

    It DOES perform like a file explorer - so where is Google's support for online file storage? Are we going to be expected to start using App Engine *as well* without this feature? Seems very odd to me that this isn't available yet.

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  2. AnonymousApril 10, 2008 at 6:52 AM

    Google Docs seems to be adding new features every second day now. I like the new coloured labels, makes it versy easy to see at a glance whats where. The hierarchial document browser is most useful too, and there is no reason it couldn't be used for other types of files, it could even perhaps stream media files and view images. some day.

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