Mountain View, California — If you are an avid Google Docs user, and receive bulk of emails with links to documents that your friends share with you. Google has earlier made it easier for Gmail users to preview items such as YouTube videos and Picasa Web albums without leaving their Gmail inboxes. Now, the internet search leader has added another feature to Gmail that lets you preview the contents of Google Docs documents, spreadsheets, and presentations directly in your inbox.
Previously, opening these links in another tab or window was sort of annoying. But beginning today, users can preview the contents of a Google document, spreadsheet, or presentation right in your Gmail inbox.
This similarly works the way YouTube, Yelp, Picasa, and Flickr album previews have already been functioning. Gmail automatically detects when you receive a document link and displays the name and type of document below the email.
Just by clicking on the “Show Preview” and the contents of the document will display right there — there is now no need to switch back and forth between email response and document, making it much more convenient in many cases.
If you only wish to glance at something to make a quick assessment, this offers a nice, tidy way to do it without first downloading the document or opening up a separate tab/windows in which to view it.
The feature is available as a Gmail Lab, so you will have to activate it for it to work. To activate Google Docs previews, go to the Labs tab under Settings and enable it. This is just the latest of Google’s frequent enhancements to Gmail.