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Questions about Google Apps?
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For general questions, contact the Computing Help Desk at 781-283-3333 or email helpdesk@wellesley.edu
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For course-related questions, contact Instructional Technology at 781-283-4848.
- Search for your questions in Google's excellent Help Center
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Explore our customized Wellesley documentation for Google Apps using the sidebar on the left.
What's new in Google Apps:
Anti-phishing security checks in the Gmail app for iOS (August 2017)
In May of this year, Google introduced anti-phishing security checks in the Gmail Android app. We’re now bringing similar checks to the Gmail app on your iOS device.
Going forward, when you click on a suspicious link in a Gmail message on your iPhone or iPad, we’ll show a warning popup message. We recommend that you use caution before proceeding, because the link is likely unsafe. Only proceed if you’re confident there’s no risk..
Changes to the Google Apps login page (April 10, 2017)
The Google Accounts login page will have a new look and feel, consistent across computers, phones, and tablets. The rollout will start with a small set of users on April 10 and ramp up slowly over the course of several weeks.
Wellesley Google Apps accounts will remain signed in unless you specifically sign out by clicking on your profile picture or letter in the top right and clicking Sign Out. When using shared or public devices, Google recommends using private browsing windows.
In the rare care where you use Google Apps inside of another app on iOS or Android, you may see an additional prompt asking you to grant access to the application.
Major update to Google Calendar for iPad (March 2017)
With this update, available in the App Store, you’ll get all the Google Calendar features you know and love in the web version, now optimized for iPad. Use Calendar’s machine intelligence-powered features to:
- Find a time and book a room. Get everyone together faster for meetings. With smart scheduling, Calendar suggests meeting times and available rooms based on your team’s availability and room preferences.
- Set Goals and achieve them. Add a goal and Calendar will intelligently schedule time for it so you can stick to it.
Google Team Drives available now (March 2017)
Google has released Team Drive. Team Drive allows a folder and its contents to be owned by a team of people instead of just one individual. This provides easy access for people on a team to add files to a shared folder without running into ownership issues when someone leaves, makes it easy to add and remove people from teams, and helps keep the files organized the same way for everyone.
Google Vault now covers data in Drive and Groups (March 2017)
Google Vault now protects data stored in Google Drive and Google Groups indefinitely, the same as we have been doing with Gmail since 2014. Google Drive still has a Trash on each account, where files are retained for 30 days unless you empty the Trash.
Please remember that all data, including data in Google Vault, may only be accessed by LTS staff when a restore request comes from the user or when we are under legal obligation to do so.
Introducing Google Keep as a G Suite Core Service (March 2017)
Google Keep has been a note-taking app in Google Apps for a while, but has now been further integrated with the Google Docs suite and is now part of the G Suite for Education's Core Services. This means it is now covered under the G Suite terms of service, which protect the data for laws such as FERPA.
Google Keep is accessible on the web where you can add it to your Google applications menu, as a Google Chrome browser plugin, and also as free iOS and Android applications.
Receive emails of up to 50Mb in Gmail (March 2017)
Starting March 1st, you will be able to receive emails of up to 50MB directly. Google Drive still offers a convenient way to share files of any size, but sometimes you need to receive large files as direct email attachments.
Note: Sending size limits will remain the same at 25MB.
Google Sheets now includes support for rotated text, accounting number formats, and more (February 2017)
You can now rotate the text in a cell in Sheets (Format > Text rotation).
It is now easier to read your budgets, expense reports, and other spreadsheets containing monetary amounts because Sheets now aligns the currency symbols within the cells (Format > Number > Accounting). Google has also made improvements to the way numbers, decimal points, and repeated characters line up to make them simpler to scan and analyze.
You can now choose from several new border styles in Sheets, including various thicknesses and double borders, which are commonly used in financial statements like balance sheets (Toolbar > Borders > Border styles).
Google no longer supporting Chrome 53 and below (February 2017)
Starting February 8, 2017, Google will show a banner at the top of the Gmail interface for users who are still on Google Chrome Browser v53 and below to encourage upgrading to the latest version of Chrome, currently on version 55. Gmail users that are still on Windows XP and Windows Vista are the most likely to be affected, because v49 was the last released version which supported those operating systems.
If you see this banner, click on the three dots/lines in the top right of your browser, go to Help > About Google Chrome, and it will check for updates and start to install any updates or display an Update Now button that you should click on to update.
Gmail will start blocking .js file attachments on February 13, 2017 (January 2017)
Gmail currently restricts certain file attachments (e.g. .exe, .msc, and .bat) for security reasons, and starting on February 13, 2017, we will not allow .js file attachments as well. Similar to other restricted file attachments, you will not be able to attach a .js file and an in-product warning will appear, explaining the reason why.
You will still be able to upload these files to Google Drive, and share them to people in email via Drive.
Google Drive Client v1.27 and old will stop working on February 1, 2017 (January 2017)
As of February 1, 2017, Google will discontinue service for the Drive Client for Mac and Windows versions 1.27 and lower. Going forward, we will officially discontinue service for any Google Drive for Mac/PC versions older than one year.
If you are using the Drive client program, you can click on the icon in your menubar/taskbar, click on the three dots and click About. If you have an older version, you can download the latest by visiting their Drive download website.
Setting Permissions on Your Google Group (January 2017)
Set who can view, post and moderate your Google group.
Quickly and easily cite your sources with Explore in Google Apps (December 2016)
Students writing research reports, analysts crafting whitepapers, and others looking to credit their sources can now insert citations as footnotes with the click of a button in Explore in Docs on the web. You can even change the format of your citation, switching between the MLA, APA, and Chicago styles.
