Microsoft Office Files Can Now be Edited Online via Google Docs

The cloud-centric editing tool lets documents be opened from Gmail itself.

People who’re involved in the editing or even mailing business, both Microsoft and Google have good news this week. If you’re using documents on Microsoft Office, that is, ‘.doc files’, you can edit content of those files on Google Docs itself.

Docs is Google’s online platform, linked to a user’s Google Drive account on the cloud. Prior to this, people using .doc files had to convert them in order to make it compatible to edit on Google Docs, but now that won’t be necessary.

As mentioned in this report, the feature compatibility will be available to a limited set of users for now, but a global availability would only happen next month.

Office Files You Can Edit on Google Docs/Sheets/Slides

• 
  Word files: .doc, .docx, .dot
• Excel files: .xls, .xlsx, .xlsm
• PowerPoint files: .ppt, .pptx, .pot

This might not be a big deal for everyone, but professionals will surely be pleased to know that their time in switching between apps can be saved. But Office files aren’t the only ones to get Google Docs support this year.

Dropbox, the cloud storage provider, also started letting its users edit files on Google Docs within the cloud storage app, available for both Android and iOS users.

Cloud storage apps have become the go-to source for many users across the globe, with Google Drive and even Dropbox, along with Apple's iCloud being the primary options considered. In such cases, it's important that these platforms offer convenience to their users, by offering more native features, rather than asking them to use it separately.