The most obvious benefit of using a Web-based application is that you can access your documents wherever you are, from any PC. With Google Docs, you’ll never be disappointed to realize that the document you need is located on your office PC when you’re using another PC, either at home or on the road.

Also nice is that, by being Web-based, you can easily share your documents with others. That makes real-time workgroup collaboration possible from anywhere around the globe, which is something you don’t have with Microsoft Office and similar programs.

Another benefit of being Web-based is that you can’t lose your work—theoretically, anyway. After you’ve named the document you’re working on, Google Docs saves your file on its servers. From that point on, every change you make to the document gets saved to the Google servers automatically. Nothing gets lost if you close your web browser, navigate to another website, or even turn off your computer. Google saves everything you do.

The final thing that’s unique about Google Docs is that it’s free. It costs nothing, unlike the ever increasingly expensive Microsoft Office. Being free makes it easy to take for a test drive, and even easier to add to your bag of applications. Many early users who’ve tried Google Docs have said that they’re likely to switch from Office. It can do almost everything Word and Excel can do, from a basic editing standpoint, which makes it perfect for corporate and small-business environments.

When you use Google Docs, you rely on Google to store your work on its servers. This may raise some concerns about privacy and security; all your data is in Google’s hands.

These sound like reasonable concerns, but Google says you shouldn’t worry. Although Google stores your documents on its servers, it does not collect other personal information about you. In addition, Google uses a secure authentication method to control access to any document you create. Although you can grant access to others to share your documents, those documents are private by default. Unless you share a document URL, no one else can view that spreadsheet.

Before you jump into the Google Docs waters, you need to consider whether Google Docs is right for your particular needs. Here are the users for whom I’d say Google Docs holds promise:

All that said, Google Docs isn’t for everyone. So who shouldn’t use Google Docs?

So, if you’re a beginning or casual user who doesn’t need fancy charts or printouts, or if you need to share your documents or collaborate online with other users, Google Docs is worth checking out.

As you’ve learned, you open a new word processing document by clicking the New button on the Google Docs home page and selecting Document. The new document, like the one shown in Figure 19.4, looks like a big blank space in a new browser window, one with a menu bar and toolbar at the top.

Figure 19.4. The Google Docs workspace.

You enter your text into the main window. Each pull-down menu is dedicated to a specific function; for example, you use the Edit menu to perform basic editing functions. And you click the buttons on the toolbar to perform some of the most common file, editing, and formatting functions.

When you create a new document, you need to save the file. When you first save a file, you must do so manually. After this first save, Google automatically resaves the file every time you make a change to the document. In essence, this means that you have to save the document only once; Google saves all further changes automatically.

To save a new document, click the Save button. Google saves the document and names it according to the first bit of text in the editing window. For example, if you entered the text “Dear Mr. Selman:”, your file would automatically be named Dear Mr. Selman:.

If you don’t like the name Google assigns, you can easily change it. Just pull down the File menu and select Rename; when prompted in the pop-up window, enter the new name and click OK.

The document is now saved on Google’s servers, and you don’t have to bother resaving it in the future.

Remember that the document file you just saved isn’t on your PC’s hard disk. It’s stored on Google’s servers, which means that you must be connected to the Internet to access it.

By default, all the documents you work with in Google Docs are stored on Google’s servers. You can, however, download files from Google to your computer’s hard drive to work with in Microsoft Word. In essence, you’re exporting your Google document to a .doc format Word file.

To export the current document, select File, Download File As, Word. When the File Download dialog box appears, click the Save button. When the Save As dialog box appears, select a location for the downloaded file, rename it if you like, and then click the Save button.

The Google Docs file is saved in .doc format on your hard disk. You can now open that file with Microsoft Word and work on it as you would with any Word document. Know, however, that whatever changes you make to the file from within Word affect only the downloaded file, not the copy of the document that still resides on the Google Docs site. If you later want to reimport the Word file to Google Docs, you’ll need to return to the main Google Docs page and use the Upload function.

Now to the main event—entering text into your document. It’s as easy as positioning the cursor in the blank area of the document window and typing the text. Use the cursor keys on the keyboard to move back and forth through the text, and the Delete and Backspace keys to delete text you’ve entered.

Google Docs lets you format your text in a number of ways. Table 19.1 details the formatting options, all available from the toolbar.

Table 19.1. Google Docs Formatting Options

You can also create a numbered list by clicking the Numbered List button, or a bulleted list by clicking the Bulleted List button. Additional formatting options are available from the Format menu, including three levels of headings, strikeout, superscript, subscript, and block quote formats.

Because Google Docs is a Web-based word processor, it’s not surprising that you can include links to web pages in your documents. All you have to do is highlight the text you want to use for the link, and then click the Link button. Google Docs displays the Insert Link dialog box, shown in Figure 19.5. Enter the URL you want to link to, as well as any “flyover” text you want displayed when the link is hovered over. If you want the link to open in a new window, click the Open Link in New Window option. Click the OK button to create the link.

Figure 19.5. Creating a Web link.

To insert pictures and other images into a document, position the cursor where you want the image to appear, and then select Insert, Picture. This displays the Insert Image dialog box; you can insert images from your computer (click the Browse button) or from the Web (enter the URL of the image).

To see more configuration options, click the More Image Options link; this lets you resize and position the image, as well as wrap the text around the image. Click the Insert button to insert the image.

Google Docs also lets you insert tables into your documents. Position the cursor where you want the table to appear, and then select Insert, Table or Table, Insert Table.

This displays the Insert Table dialog box, shown in Figure 19.6. From here, you select the following options:

Figure 19.6. Creating a table.

After the table is created, you can position the cursor within the cells to enter text. To further edit the look of the table, as well as insert or delete rows and columns, right-click the table and make a selection from the pop-up menu.

A word processor wouldn’t be complete without a way to check your spelling, which is why Google Docs includes its own spell checker. To check the spelling in a document, just click the Check Spelling button on the toolbar. Google Docs checks your document and highlights words that are either misspelled or not in its built-in dictionary. Click a highlighted word to see a list of suggested spellings or to add this word to the dictionary.

Printing a Google Docs document is as simple as clicking the Print button on the toolbar. When the Print dialog box appears, make sure the correct printer is selected, and click the Print button.