Oct 12, 2017 - Docs keeps everything and everyone on the same page. Add artichokes to a shared shopping list, or put the finishing touches on your business. Google Docs is all about collaboration, and you can even permit people who don’t have a Google account to view and edit your documents. Mac android emulator game. To share a file, click the padlock icon alongside the.

The aging Google Drive app for desktop is officially deprecated as of today, Google. Support will be cut off on December 11th and the app will shut down completely on March 12th, 2018. Users who are still running the Drive app will start seeing notifications in October that it’s “going away,” and the company will steer customers towards one of two replacements depending on whether they’re a consumer or business user. Google Drive the service isn’t going anywhere. You can still access it from the web, smartphone apps, and either of the software options mentioned below.

Google now has two fairly new software tools for backing up your data and/or accessing files in the cloud., the all-encompassing consumer app that replaces both the standalone Google Drive and Google Photos Uploader apps. It offers essentially the same functionality as Drive and works much the same way. And on the enterprise side, Google has rolled out Drive File Stream, which saves space on your local drive while providing access to “all of your Google Drive files on demand, directly from your computer.” It’s a much more elegant and integrated approach. “Say goodbye to time-consuming file syncing and any concerns about disk space,” Google says of the benefits that Drive File Stream introduces. There are some differences between the apps; both can do one or two things that the other can’t, so check out to see which is the better fit. For most people the Backup and Sync option is probably it, though power users have complained about its lack of support for NAS drives.

Microsoft Office files are still very common, but if you’re more of a Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides user, you can still edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files in Google Drive–if you know how. On the desktop, you’ll need to use the Google Chrome browser and an official Chrome extension to edit Microsoft Office documents, using Google Drive’s Office Compatibility Mode (OCM). You can edit them like that, or convert them to Google Docs format, which will provide more features. (Don’t worry–even if you convert them to Google Docs format, you can re-download them in Microsoft Office format later). You can also edit Microsoft Office files using the Google Drive app and the Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides apps on iOS or Android. We’ll show you both methods in the guide below.

How to Work with Microsoft Office Files on Google Drive on a PC or Mac Let’s start with the desktop. If the Office file you want to edit and share is still on your PC’s hard drive, you can easily upload it to Google Drive and open it for editing in Chrome using a Chrome extension. Open Chrome, go to the, click “Add to Chrome”, and follow the on-screen instructions to install it.

Once the extension is installed, drag the Office file onto the Chrome window until you see a copy icon as shown below. For my example throughout this article, I’m going to use a Word/Google Docs file, but the procedure is the same for Excel/Google Sheets files and PowerPoint/Google Slides files. The first time you drag an Office file onto the Chrome window, the following dialog box displays. Click “Got it” to close the window. You won’t see this dialog box again.

RELATED: The Office file is uploaded to your Google Drive account and opened on the current tab. There a limited number of features you can use to edit the Office file in your Google Drive account. However, if you convert the document to a Google document, there are more features available, and you can. To convert your Word file to a Google Docs document, select “Save as Google Docs” from the “File” menu.

If you uploaded and opened an Excel file (.xlsx or.xls), the option would be “Save as Google Sheets” and if the file is a PowerPoint file (.pptx or.ppt), the option would be “Save as Google Slides”. A dialog box displays while the document is converted and saved to your Google Drive account. You can stop the conversion by clicking “Cancel”. Once you make your changes, you can download the Google document as an Office file. In my example, I select “Download as” from the “File” menu and then select “Microsoft Word (.docx)” from the submenu. There are also other formats in which you can download the Word file, such as.rtf,.pdf, and even as an eBook (.epub). The name of the original file is used by default, but you can change it in the “File name” edit box.

Then, click “Save”. Another way to work with Office files in your Google Drive account is to upload them to your Google Drive account, which can be downloaded from. If you’ve uploaded your Word file this way, you can, and then open the Word file in Google Docs. For my example, I’ll open my Word file by right-clicking on the file in my Google Drive account, selecting “Open with” from the popup menu, and then selecting “Google Docs” from the submenu. The Word file is opened in a new tab and you can edit the document just like when you dragged the Word file onto the Chrome window previously. You can also “Download” the file as a Word file using the “Download” button in the upper-right corner of the browser window, or using the “Share” button.