Google Tips for MacEwan University

As a Google Apps for Education (GAFE) university, Appointment Slots is an exciting feature that we get to enjoy that a personal Google Gmail user doesn't. For faculty, this is a great way to publish office hours so students can go online and pick a time slot. Note: both parties must be logged into their Google accounts. Using Appointment Slots in a Groupwise World Although access is available to Google Calendar, staff and faculty will continue to use Groupwise for their email and calendaring functions (Google Calendar does not sync to a user’s Groupwise calendar). Although you will have to maintain 2 calendars, this does not have to be complicated: when a student books a time, an email is sent to your Groupwise account you can have a daily agenda of your Google Calendar emailed to you You can access your Google calendar by logging into  myportal.macewan.ca . From there,  select Google Calendar from the launch pad on the left. (if that doesn’t work, you can al...

Inserting a comment into a document is a great collaborative feature of Google Apps —it allows participants to carry on a discussion about a potential change. However, sometimes you just want to suggest a change in wording. With the Suggest Edits feature, you can highlight a piece of text and  type in what you think the text to be (similar to Microsoft's Track Changes feature). Like comments, collaborators can comment on the suggestion, and when ready, accept the change. You can find more from Google Help or watch the video below!

Ever had to retype a page of text? It's a long process that nobody really likes to do — except Google! Optical Character Recognition (OCR) lets you convert images/PDFs with text into text documents. All you need to do is scan, upload and Google will convert your document. So let's look at the steps: Scan your document. You can use a regular scanner, photocopier/scanner or numerous apps for your mobile device to scan your document. Upload the file . Currently, to take advantage of OCR, you must do this through your desktop browser. Ensure Convert text from PDF  is selected in the settings: Start the upload Once conversion is completed, Google will create a document for you that contains an image of each page followed by the text it converted for that page. This provides an easy way to check Google's work and make any corrections. You can see 2 samples here . For more information see:  About Optical Character Recognition in Google Drive . To find out how yo...

As a document stored in Google Drive (i.e. the cloud), you never have to download or email a file — you just connect to it through your browser and start working. However, working with Google Apps is more than just cloud storage — it's about collaboration on a whole new level . Collaborators can access the same document at the same time. You see other people's changes happen on your screen while you're making your own. In fact, you can have up to 50 people making changes on the document at the same time! For students, this means group work can be easily accomplished anywhere there's an internet connection - on a desktop or mobile device. Faculty and administration can also take advantage of the collaboration features of Google Apps. With individuals working different hours and different locations (both on and off campus) the ability to work on a single document instead of trying to remember where the most recent version is stored, is invaluable. And when done making...

Sometimes when you try to open a file, you’ll see a message indicating you don’t have access. This usually happens when you’re logged in with your personal Gmail account but are trying to access a document stored on Google Drive only available to MacEwan University accounts. Instead of requesting access, select Switch accounts : In the next step select Sign in to another account. Sign in using your MacEwan University username and password. You should then be able to access the document! In the future, if you are logged in to your personal account and try to access something only available to your work account, it will prompt you to switch accounts. More information can be found on Google’s support site. If you still have problems accessing the document, completely log out of your personal account and log in again through myportal.macewan.ca . Originally posted as a Google Doc To find out how you can take advantage of Google Apps in your area, contact Trevor ...

If you're using the Bold command for your headings and subheadings, then you need to discover Google's styles! Not only can you quickly assign size/color/spacing/bolding to text, you can update all instances inyour document with just one change! Assign and update As you're creating your document, instead of bolding, assign one of the heading styles (don't worry if you don't like the look of it — you can change that). Once you've assigned a style to a piece of text, highlight the text and make the changes until you're happy with the result. Then you can update the heading  (see image below) and all instances throughout the document will be updated! You can even set the defaults for all future documents you create by selecting Save as my default styles from the Options at the bottom of the styles list. Table of Contents from your styles Once you've formatted all your text using styles, you can quickly create a Table of Contents. Just selec...

For years MacEwan University used mailing lists (managed through listservs) to broadcast information to their list members. Today, Google Groups gives us that functionality, and more. For most people, a simple mailing list is all they need - they're just looking for a way to send out a message to a large group of people. However, there are some simple steps you can take to ensure your Google group is working to your advantage. For all those new Google Groups Admins, check out the Google Groups - New Administrators document . To find out how you can take advantage of Google Apps in your area, contact Trevor Beck ( beckt@macewan.ca ) at 780-497-5053.

If you're a personal Gmail user at work, you've probably run into a situation where you're visiting a Google resource and it asks for your to login using your MacEwan University credentials. To get back to your personal Gmail, you may have to again logout and log back in (or sometimes you're be asked to switch accounts ). A simple solution to this is to use Profiles in Google's Chrome browser. Basically, it's like having 2 different browsers - one for your personal account and one for your work account. This will help ensure that you keep those 2 worlds separate! Instructions for setup can be found here: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2364824?hl=en Tip When you setup the accounts, assign different icons and themes to each account so you can easily see which window is logged into which account. To find out how you can take advantage of Google Apps in your area, contact Trevor Beck ( beckt@macewan.ca ) at 780-497-5053.