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October 15, 2009

Preview Google Documents Inside Gmail

Gmail Labs has a new experiment that lets you preview documents, spreadsheets and presentations created using Google Docs. If you receive a message that links to a Google Docs file, you'll be able to preview the document inside Gmail.

"Opening these links in another tab or window is kind of annoying, plus it can be tough to keep the context of the email in mind while viewing the document," mentions the Gmail Blog. Previews are displayed at the bottom of the message, so I don't think you can maintain the context.


Gmail has 5 other experimental features that let you preview YouTube videos, Picasa Web and Flickr photos, Yelp reviews and voicemails from Google Voice, but I think these previews would be more useful if they were displayed inline, like Yahoo Mail's shortcuts or Interclue's tooltips.

7 comments:

  1. I just enabled that. But still don't see Show Preview in my email.

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  2. To see the previews, your messages needs to include at least one link to a Google Docs document, spreadsheet or presentation.

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  3. Thats great, thanks for the headds up. Going there to try it now.

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  4. Well, thanks so much, thats really wonderful. By the way I wanna know more about Google update. Right now I see the confusion in the SERPs of certain subjects, some displaying no more than 2-5 pages. Does this mean that Google in the process of updating?

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  5. @Alex: Allowing preview only for Google Docs links is "lame".

    "Opening these links in another tab or window is kind of annoying, plus it can be tough to keep the context of the email in mind while viewing the document."

    How do they justify that how a Google Docs document and a Microsoft Word attachment are different and why opening the preview for MS Word document is NOT "kind of annoying"? :x

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  6. Is anybody use this?
    How much performance can you get?

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  7. Is it can work out? It will be a good help, nice!

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