Wednesday, May 29, 2019

Directly Edit Microsoft Office Files with Google Docs, Sheets & Slides

What’s changing 

With Office editing, you can now edit, comment, and collaborate on Microsoft Office files using Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides. This feature brings the collaboration benefits of G Suite to Office files while streamlining workflows by eliminating the need to convert file types.



Why you’d use it 

Office editing will make it easy for G Suite users to open and edit Microsoft Office files that have been shared by partners, vendors or other teams. In cases where some members of your organization use Office while others use G Suite, this ensures seamless collaboration and eliminates the need to consider or convert file types.

Office editing brings everyone the benefits of G Suite’s real time collaboration tools and intelligence features to Office files.


End users:
  • In Google Drive, double-click your Office file. This will open a preview of the file. 
  • At the top, click Open in Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides
  • From here, you can edit, share, view version history, collaborate in real-time with others, and more. 
  • All changes you make will be saved to the original Office file. 

Additional details 

The following Office file types are supported: 
  • Word files: .doc, .docx, .dot 
  • Excel files: .xls, .xlsx, .xlsm (macro enabled Excel files), .xlt 
  • Powerpoint files: .ppt, .pptx, .pps, .pot 
Note: If you edit Word, Excel, or PowerPoint documents older than Office 2007, files will be saved to a newer format when editing using Office editing. 

Note: 

If you have the Office Editing for Docs, Sheets & Slides Extension already installed it must be removed before this new feature will work:

Sign into Google Chrome Browser with your Managed Google Account
Navigate to the upper right of your screen to the Settings area
Image of where the Settings field is located on a Google Chrome web viewer

Select More Tools

Image of where to find the More Tools on a dropdown menu

Select Extensions
Image of drop down menu with Extensions highlighted

Locate the Office Editing for Docs, Sheets & Slides from your options of extensions and select Remove

Image of Extension icons with the Office Editing for Docs, Sheets & Slides highlighted



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