In the workaday world, it happens all the time. You get caught in a string of emails among colleagues, the thread grows and grows as everyone adds their two cents, and when the dust settles, you realize that you've managed to create a ton of good content. Unfortunately, you're now tasked with cutting and pasting all of that good content into a more formal document. If only you could press a button and turn that email into something more useful.
Now, you can. Thanks to Google Labs.
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Just add the "Create a Document" Labs feature, open the email string you'd like to convert, and you'll notice a new option in your right sidebar called - appropriately enough - Create a document. Click the link and, after a few moments of conversion, you'll be transported to a Google Docs version of the email you were just reading.
But what if you're simply inspired by the email and not its contents? Create a Document can help you there, too. Once the feature and keyboard shortcuts are enabled, you gain the ability to start a new blank Doc directly from Gmail. Simply, hit the G and W keys at the same time and you'll have a new blank document. Ta dah!
Now, granted, this may not seem like a huge leap forward in technology. But it does mark yet another step that enhances the interoperability among the Google offerings. And that provides a glimmer of hope - and a reason to seriously consider Google's suite of tools - especially for those of us who constantly bemoan the lacking interoperability among the components of other more popular office productivity suites.
At the very least, it makes more sense than Google Mail Goggles.
To try the new feature, log into Gmail and then visit Google Labs to enable Create a Document.
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