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The Google Docs team last week promised to dust off its suite of word processing, spreadsheet and presentation apps.
Today, it began the rollout of such new features by adding the ability to import tables from Microsoft Office PowerPoint and insert them in presentations:
Moreover, the tables will be editable. When you drop a table into a presentation, you can add, select and resize rows and columns, and format and align text across the table. You can also change background colors for the table cells and borders.
Team members working on a presentation can also make edits to the same table at the same time without cancelling out each other’s work. Users can also make embedded presentations play automatically:
Add a table to your presentation by opening the presentation and clicking Table > Insert table. You can then set the dimensions you want for the table.
Want to get more comfortable with the tool before you dive in? Click here to learn how to use the feature.
Alex Chitu hopes Google will add the tables capability to the Docs word processing app, too.
Whether this happens or not, supporting tables in Google Docs presentations is another step Google is taking to augment its Google Apps collaboration suite to approximate the functionality in Microsoft’s Office applications.
With Microsoft Office Web hot on Google Apps’ heels, expect Google to ramp up its functionality to stay ahead of Microsoft as the two vendors increasingly compete in cloud computing.