Google’s office suite is available to anyone with a Gmail email address. These users can store up to 15 GB of documents online for free and have several different office applications to use for work, school, and a variety of other purposes. More storage and professional versions of the suite are also available. Go to drive.google.com to access it.
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Applications
Docs, Sheets, and Slides can open applications in Microsoft Office formats, OpenDocument Formats, and other formats, but each have their own native formats for creating documents. Users can access these applications through just about any Web browser, though Google Chrome will give users more editing options and features for documents.
Google Docs
The word processor has eight menus and a taskbar. New documents are created in the GDOC format. Word documents (DOCX) can be opened directly in Docs without being converted into this file format. However, for documents in other formats, a copy of the document will be made in the GDOC format. These include documents in OpenDocument Text (ODT) and Rich Text formats (RTF).
Web pages and videos in this subsection are about items in the menus and taskbar. It also covers right-click menus and keystrokes. Many items in the menus can also be found in the right-click context menus and performed when keystrokes are pressed.

Google Sheets
The spreadsheet application has nine menus, a taskbar, and a formula bar. It has many of the capabilities as Microsoft Excel. Most of the formulas Excel users can perform will also work in a Sheets spreadsheet.
A new spreadsheet will be created in a proprietary format, GSHEET. Microsoft Excel spreadsheets also can be opened directly in Sheets. However, Sheets will make a copy of spreadsheets in OpenDocument Spreadsheet (ODS) and in other formats that Sheets can open before opening them. More features are available in GSHEET documents than Excel ones.
This subsection will cover the features and settings that are in the menus and taskbar. The right-click menus and keystrokes also will be covered. These will be covered in Web pages and videos.

Google Slides
The presentation is the third application in Google’s office suite. Like Docs and Sheets, new documents are created in a proprietary format, GSLIDES. The nine menus and taskbar are available to these documents and PowerPoint formatted presentations (PPTX) that have been uploaded to Google Drive.

Other applications
The Other subsection has Web pages and videos about other applications, such as Forms and Drawings. Some features and functions are the same across all or several of the applications, such as opening a document. Videos and Web pages will cover these functions and features.
- Forms
- Drawings
- My Maps
- Sites
Google drive

The central manager has various settings that can be applied to one or more documents or folders at a time. These settings and features are available through a right-click menu or through a menu at the top of the document list that appears when documents and folders are selected. There are other items in Google Drive.
History
Google acquired Upstartle in 2006, a company that was behind creating a word processor that runs in a Web browser, called Writely. The same year Google purchased 2Web Technologies, which developed a spreadsheet that could be accessed through a Web browser, XL2Web. One year later Slides was released. It was originally developed by Tonic Systems. These applications could only be used by single users.
However, this changed when Google purchased DocVerse in 2010. This was a company that focused on online document collaboration. Two years later QuickOffice was acquired by Google to bring its office applications to mobile devices.
That same year, 2012, Google launched Drive, so users can store, share, and synchronize documents and data. The office applications became part of Drive in the same year.
Overview video
Other links
Other suites
Google Docs
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Google sheets
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Google slides
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