14 DAY TRIAL // More than a year ago, Google Docs introduced a series of revamped editors, for documents, spreadsheets and so on. The new editors were built from the ground up and documents created with the new editor could not be opened with the old one.
Still, there were plenty of old documents which people didn't convert and Google still supports the old editors and formats. But it is slowly moving away from them, the latest move in this direction is the removal of the old-style templates from the public gallery.
The templates will still be supported, for legacy reasons, but you will not be able to create new documents based on them.
"We continue to add new features like pagination and discussions to the new document editor, and we want to make sure you always have access to all of the latest functionality -- whether you’re creating a new doc from scratch or using a template from the gallery," Jeff Harris, Product Manager at Google, wrote.
"As part of this effort, we’re removing Google Docs templates created in the old document editor from the Google Docs template gallery," announced.
Google hopes that the move will mean less documents are created with the old editors, making it easier for them to be deprecated in the future.
"Starting on September 30th, old style templates will remain accessible to their owners and to anyone who the template has been shared with, but they will no longer be visible in the public gallery," Google said.
The move only affects regular Google Docs users, templates available for Google Apps users will not be removed. This is probably due to the fact that some businesses may be relying on an old-style template and would not appreciate having the option removed.
Still, templates can be converted to the new editor, just like any document. You can use the Preview option to see what they look like in the new editor and then click on Update this Document if you're satisfied with the result.