Services & Apps

Google has added twelve new document types that Gmail and Google Docs can view and store online.

Google continues to expand the number of file formats that its online document viewer can handle. Originally Gmail and Google Docs could open certain Microsoft Office document types, some image types, and PDFs.

Friday's announcement brings the rest of Microsoft's new file formats into the fold, and several other interesting formats. Adobe's Photoshop (PSD) and Illustrator (AI) files can now be viewed within Gmail, along with Apples Pages (.PAGES).

I decided to try out the PSD viewing functionality, since I work with designers on an almost daily basis. I sent myself a relatively complex PSD that has several layers of text and images.

Gmail opened it just fine but couldn't really access the file. Manipulation of layers is not available, nor is searching for text (my document had a text field on the topmost layer). All that's viewable is the topmost layer, which is useless as Photoshop files are, normally, heavily layered.

Hopefully support continues to improve although being able to store and quickly preview files is handy by itself. You can see all the file types Google has added in Google's blog post announcement.