Google Calendar’s “Quick Add” feature is a great way to add events to your calendar in seconds.
When you’re in Google Calendar, press the “q” key. You’ll see a small text box pop up near the top left of your calendar. (If you don’t see it, check your settings to make sure calendar keyboard shortcuts are enabled).
When you create an all-day event in Google Calendar, it’s marked as Available by default because a lot of people use all-day events as reminders or milestones. However, if someone is using the “Find a Time” feature to schedule time with you, they may not know you’re busy. If you are actually going to be busy because of the all-day event, you should edit the event and change the availability setting to Busy.
Once you change this setting to Busy, your day will appear blocked off to anyone using the “Find a Time” feature when creating an event. This behavior has changed over the last year, so if you were blocking off your calendar in addition to an all-day event, you may no longer find the need to do so.
For comparison, see the “Find a Time” views below in which we are attempting to schedule with someone who has an all-day event on his or her calendar. On the left, the all-day event has been left as Available. In the one on the right, the all-day event has been changed to Busy. You can see how the all-day event with a busy status blocks off the whole day in the view on the right.
By default, all editors of your shared Google documents and document collections can share those items with others. In most cases, this is convenient, but if you have a document or collection that you want to keep confidential, you may want to change this setting to prevent accidental sharing.
To change the setting, go to the sharing settings for the item, and look for the line at the bottom which says “Editors will be allowed to add people and change the permissions” (marked with a red arrow in the image below). Click the “change” link and you’ll be able to prevent editors from sharing.
Of course, like many other methods of protecting documents from being copied or shared, this isn’t foolproof. Someone could copy the text of the document, download the document, or even just take a screen capture (anything you can see on a computer screen can be copied this way). So, along with changing a setting like this, it’s best to set expectations and let your fellow editors know who should see a document.
Did you hit Send too quickly? Whether it’s an embarrassing mistake or you simply forgot to Reply All, the Undo Send lab can help you take back your email before it’s too late.
Here’s how it works – Undo Send delays the sending of your email for up to thirty seconds and displays an Undo link at the top of your email until it’s actually sent. Clicking Undo will change the message back into a draft. Since you can’t truly take back an email once it goes out, this is a clever workaround!
If you’d like to use this feature, enable Undo Send in your Labs right away so it’s available when you need it. Instructions are available at http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1284885
Reminder: Disabling Labs
Labs are experimental features and, in certain cases, can cause problems on certain browsers or in certain combinations (although many of us use labs all the time and have never experienced problems). If you are having difficulty viewing your email and suspect it might have to do with a lab you enabled, you can access a labs-free view of your email by visiting https://mail.google.com/a/brown.edu/?labs=0. Once you log in, you can go to your settings and disable whichever labs you suspect might be causing a problem, then log back in at http://gmail.brown.edu.
If you have visitors, whether for a conference or just a casual stay, you can make their Brown visit easier by creating a customized Google Map. They’ll be able to view important locations, print the map, get directions from one location to another (also on foot, on a bicycle, or with public transit), and – depending on their phone model – use your map for real-time navigation. If you don’t organize events at Brown, you may be interested in trying this tip for your next vacation.
Step by Step Instructions: Welcome Visitors with a Google Map
If someone leaves your group or stops working on a project with you, how can you find (and remove their access to) the Google Docs you’ve shared with them?
In Google Docs, click the little arrow in the right corner of the search box, and choose Owned by Me.
Then, in the search box, type to: followed by the person’s full email address, with no spaces in between. An example would be to:josiah_carberry@brown.edu.
Hit Enter to search and you will see a list of documents and collections owned by you and shared with that person. You can right click (or on a Mac, control click) on a document to access its sharing permissions and remove the person.
You may see collections (the Google Doc equivalent of folders) appear in your search results. Permissions can be set on the collection itself and carry down to all the docs inside that collection. If you had given someone permission to a collection instead of the individual documents inside it, you can simply remove their access to the collection instead of having to change sharing permissions for each individual document. This is why collections are a great way to manage permissions – it’s easy to add or remove someone’s access to many docs at the collection level. For instructions on sharing collections, see Google’s help page on how to share a collection.
Do you access a general mailbox for your department (e.g., psychoceramics@brown.edu)? If you have access to several shared (delegated) mailboxes, you may notice that your list looks shorter than usual – there is now a scroll bar to the right that’s easy to miss.
A while back, we had a tip about how to find your docs using search operators. There’s now an easier way to search Google Docs. If you feel overwhelmed by your list of docs and have trouble finding the documents you need, definitely give this tip a try!
When you’re in Google Docs, take a look at the search box on the top. Do you see the little arrow on the right site? Click it, and you’ll see some extra criteria you can easily add to your search.
Let’s walk through an example. Say I’m organizing some events and I have a few spreadsheets of participants. I’m looking for one spreadsheet in particular, but I’m not quite sure what I called it.
I might start by simply searching for the word “participants”:
But when I view the results, I see too many different types of files (like text documents and presentations). Since I know I want a spreadsheet, I’m going to click the arrow on the right side of the search box and choose Type > Spreadsheets.
Now I only see spreadsheets, which is helpful. But my colleagues have shared so many spreadsheets with me, and they’re cluttering up my search. Let me make my spreadsheet easier by find by clicking on the arrow and specifying that I only want to see files Owned by Me.
Finally, I am only viewing spreadsheets owned by me with the keyword participants. My spreadsheet is much easier to find!
Heading styles help keep your document organized and legible. As of last week, you can customize the appearance of heading styles, creating a more attractive and consistent look.
We’ve created our first video tip to show you how to use Heading Styles in a Google Doc:
Watch “Google Docs: Working with Heading Styles” on YouTube
For text instructions, see Google’s Help page:
http://support.google.com/docs/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=116338
If you’re using the Mail app on an iPhone 4 to read your Brown email, you may have noticed that your email has an “Archive” instead of a “Delete” button. If you’d rather delete mail like you were able to on older iPhones, no problem! You simply need to change a setting:
What’s the difference between Archive and Delete? Emails that are archived are removed from your Inbox but kept in All Mail. They will appear in searches. If the email already has a label, it will remain in that label. Emails that are deleted are sent to the Trash, and after 30 days, they are automatically permanently deleted – so you should never delete emails that you may need to refer to in the future.
Why would I want to change this setting? It depends on your email management strategy. If you like to keep all your email, but want a clean Inbox, you may prefer the Archive option. If you delete mail because you know you’ll never need to refer to it again, you may prefer the Delete option.
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