Today Google made officially available for everyone the Cloud Connect plugin for Microsoft Office, which was only available for selected number of users back in November; now everybody can work and collaborate with other people in a much easier way. The Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft plugin is live now and you can easily get it here!
Cloud Connect is a free plugin from Google that will add a new toolbar at the top of the Office application and it will allow you to share and collaborate Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents with any person you choose by just sending an email with the unique link address that is given to the file, and can be accessed from anywhere, then the recipient can just click the link and open the Office document into Google Docs — as you can see, you don’t even need have Microsoft Office to collaborate –, at which point the person can also download the file and open it with the corresponding Office application.
The benefits using Cloud Connect are great, for example: When collaborating you shouldn’t worry about overlapping edits, because all the changes are kept, the only thing that you need to do if that happens, is to choose which change you want to keep in that particular section of the document. Documents that you modify are sync automatically to the cloud, they are always backed up and you can roll-back to previous version at any time. You can also work offline and the next time there is an available internet connection Cloud Connect will sync the file automatically. Another feature that is pretty handy is that if you need to show a document to someone but you don’t want that person to edit the file, you can easily send an View Only link.
The bottom line is that with Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office you are going to gain a lot of new features, you will be more productive, no more sending attachments back and forth or spending time trying to keep track which is the latest document version, no upgrades to your current software setup needed anymore, and best of all you won’t have to spend any money in new software. Cloud Connect works in Microsoft Office 2003, 2007 & 2010.
Here is a YouTube video showing how all this works.
Learn more on how to use Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office
Collaborate Editing
Revision History
Share a document
Resolve overlapping edits
Edit document offline
Syncing to the Cloud
Mauro Huculak is a Windows How-To Expert who started Pureinfotech in 2010 as an independent online publication. He has also been a Windows Central contributor for nearly a decade. Mauro has over 14 years of experience writing comprehensive guides and creating professional videos about Windows and software, including Android and Linux. Before becoming a technology writer, he was an IT administrator for seven years. In total, Mauro has over 20 years of combined experience in technology. Throughout his career, he achieved different professional certifications from Microsoft (MSCA), Cisco (CCNP), VMware (VCP), and CompTIA (A+ and Network+), and he has been recognized as a Microsoft MVP for many years. You can follow him on X (Twitter), YouTube, LinkedIn and About.me. Email him at [email protected].