Is Google Docs still being actively developed?

timetogo

Not sure if this is the right forum but it can be moved if it's not.

I've started experimenting with Google Docs over the last couple of weeks. I was happy enough with it but I'm starting to find problems that are steering me back to Microsoft.

The two issues I've noticed (from very little investigating) are

1: There's no localisation for Ireland. By that I mean to choose Euros and use the standard date format that we use in Ireland in the spreadsheets I've to choose the UK for my home country and when entering currency I've to go into a couple of submenus as £ is shown as the currency. No major biggie, but it should be very simple to fix especially as Google have their HQ in Dublin.

2: In the document editor, yesterday I created a table of contents for a document I was working on. This is normal. The table of contents tool in Google Docs doesn't add page numbers to the table. This is disastrous if you're working on a large document. I did a quick Google and found people complaining about this on the Google forums in 2011. I'd create tocs in a lot of documents and it's really likely this'll be a dealbreaker for me.

Those are two basic issues found in a few hours of using the apps. Does anybody know any workaround for the table of contents issue. Putting the numbers in manually is OK on a small doc. It's no good on a large document that you'll be adding / removing pages from frequently.

Edit: Ah fek found another one. You can't have a different header / footer on different sections of your document. You either have the same header on all pages in your document (including your title page) or you have none. Searching for this brings me to the Google forums again where people again were requesting this in 2011.

edanto

I've been using it for a few years and development has been very slow.

It's not a replacement for office - but it's way ahead of office in terms of real time collaboration.

What I've found is that Google Docs is great for internal/collaborative docs, but that you need a meaty app like Word or LibreOffice to make any large document presentable and professional. A good workflow can be to draft and finalise the content in Google Apps, then if necessary download and format in Word/Writer before sending externally.

From the other direction, I've been experimenting with the latest Microsoft online excel and word and some things in them are 5 years behind Google Docs.... so it's just a matter of knowing which tool to take from the box depending on the job at hand.

timetogo

edanto wrote: »

I've been using it for a few years and development has been very slow.

It's not a replacement for office - but it's way ahead of office in terms of real time collaboration.

Yeah, the collaboration is good. But I don't need to use that much. Not being localised for Ireland and the table of contents not working properly and the header / footer stuff mean you can't really use it for anything more than basic docs (well I can't anyway).

Every year I try some alternatives to get me off MS Office (hugely expensive) and always have to go back with my tail between my legs . They're getting better but not there yet.