Google Cloud Connect moves Microsoft Office files to Google Docs, as long as you’re not using a Mac
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Google is continuing its advance on Microsoft Office with Cloud Connect, a software plug-in that moves Office files to Google Docs.
Cloud Connect, released Thursday, allows users to save their files to ‘the cloud,’ which in this case is Google servers.
Once the files are saved in Google Docs, users can then edit files in Microsoft Office and sync them up to the cloud -- which Google says more easily allows collaboration on documents and cuts out confusion over which version of a document is the most recent one.
‘For example, you can edit a Word document’s table of contents from Dublin while co-workers adjust formatting and make revisions from Denver,’ said Shan Sinha, Google Apps product manager in a blog post. ‘Instead of bombarding each other with attachments and hassling to reconcile people’s edits, your whole team can focus on productive work together.’
Google also saves every revision of any document users of Cloud Connect make, whether those edits take place in Office or Google Docs. And files can be shared in a view-only form via Google Docs as well with each document getting a unique Web address.
Cloud Connect is free and works with Office 2003, 2007 and 2010 on Windows PCs. Cloud Connect, however, won’t work with Mac versions of Office.
‘Due to the lack of support for open APIs on Microsoft Office for Mac, we are unable to make Google Cloud Connect available on Macs at this time,’ Sinha said. ‘We look forward to when that time comes so we can provide this feature to our Mac customers as well.’
Microsoft is working on business services that could offer the same features as Cloud Connect as a part of its Office 365 product, which is expected to be released this year.
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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles