Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office

After using Google docs and Microsoft’s Office Web app for a sometime, I notice there is gap overlaid between these 2 services.

·         Both Google docs and Skydive (Microsoft’s Office Web app storing) enables collaboration between colleague and team members as the team can either view or edit the document directly,

·         Both offers an online web editing, although I have to admit that Microsoft did a better job for their function, whereas Google only provided simple formatting tools for each document type, hence it would be almost impossible to create a presentable presentation on Google docs embedded / enhanced with 3d graphics and effects.

·         When dealing with revisions and changes in the document, Google has it all, whereas in Skydive, you got to enable the tracking features.

·         When dealing with sharing features, with Google’s richer integrating with gmail, sharing is a not hassle. In Skydive, you still got to muck around with the folder settings and properties.

So, each world has its strong point, and being able to merge or combine them would be something really neat.

Surfing through the net, I found this tool create by Google as a plugin for Microsoft Office that enables Office documents to be uploaded and shared in the Google docs cloud in the exact same way!

This plugin is calls Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office. After installation, open an Office document, the plug-in will load and check if the document contains a document ID, if not, it will create an ID and upload this to your Google docs directory, with a hash key that stamps the time to the file. As mentioned, earlier, you should be able to share this document with anyone similar to what you can do in Google docs. You should also can control who can view, or edit the file.

Shown below, I managed to add people via their emails, HOWEVER, it seems that I can’t change if they can either only view or edit the document since the drop down button won’t react to my click. I believe up to the moment of this posting, Google has been notified of this problem so a fix should be out soon.

This plugin support Microsoft Office 2003, 2007 and 2010.