{"id":3939,"date":"2011-02-24T19:31:32","date_gmt":"2011-02-24T18:31:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/3939-hands-on-with-google-cloud-connect-microsoft-docs-in-googles-cloud.html"},"modified":"2011-02-24T19:31:32","modified_gmt":"2011-02-24T18:31:32","slug":"hands-on-with-google-cloud-connect-microsoft-docs-in-googles-cloud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/3939-hands-on-with-google-cloud-connect-microsoft-docs-in-googles-cloud.html","title":{"rendered":"Hands on with Google Cloud Connect: Microsoft docs in Google\u2019s cloud"},"content":{"rendered":"

Google has released Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office<\/a>, and I gave it a quick try.<\/p>\n

Cloud Connect is a plug-in for Microsoft Office which installs a toolbar into Word, Excel and PowerPoint. There is no way that I can see to hide the toolbar. Every time you work in Office you will see Google\u2019s logo.<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

From the toolbar, you sign into a Google Docs account, for which you must sign up if you have not done so already. The sign-in involves passing a rather bewildering dialog granting permission to Cloud Connect on your computer to access Google Docs and contacts on your behalf.<\/p>\n

The Cloud Connect settings synchronise your document with Google Docs every time you save, or whenever the document is updated on Google\u2019s servers.<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Once a document is synched, the Cloud Connect toolbar shows an URL to the document:<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

You get simultaneous editing if more than one person is working on the document. Google Docs will also keep a revision history.<\/p>\n

You can easily share a document by clicking the Share button in the toolbar:<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I found it interesting that Google stores your document in its original Microsoft format, not as a Google document. If you go to Google Docs in a web browser, they are marked by Microsoft Office icons.<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

If you click on them in Google Docs online, they appear in a read-only viewer.<\/p>\n

That said, in the case of Word and Excel documents the online viewer has an option to Edit Online. <\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This is where it gets messy. If you choose Edit online, Google docs converts your Office document to a Google doc, which possible loss of formatting. Worse still, if you make changes these are not synched back to Microsoft Office because you are actually working on a second copy:<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Note that I now have two versions of the same Excel document, distinguished only by the icon and that the title has been forced to lower case. One is a Google spreadsheet, the other an Excel spreadsheet.<\/p>\n

Google says this is like SharePoint, but better<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

Google Cloud Connect vastly improves Microsoft Office 2003, 2007 and 2010, so companies can start using web-enabled teamwork tools without upgrading Microsoft Office or implementing SharePoint 2010.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Google makes the point that Office 2010 lacks web-based collaboration unless you have SharePoint, and says its $50 per user Google Apps for Business is more affordable. I am sure that is less than typical SharePoint rollouts \u2013 though SharePoint has other features.  The best current comparison would be with Business Productivity Online Standard Suite<\/a> at $10 per user per month, which is more than Google but still relatively inexpensive. BPOS is out of date though and an even better comparison will be Office 365<\/a> including SharePoint 2010 online, though this is still in beta. <\/p>\n

Like Google, Microsoft has a free offering, SkyDrive<\/a>, which also lets you upload and share Office documents.<\/p>\n

Microsoft\u2019s Office Web Apps have an advantage over Cloud Connect, in that they allow in-browser editing without conversion to a different format, though the editing features on offer are very limited compared with what you can do in the desktop applications.<\/p>\n

Despite a few reservations, I am impressed with Cloud Connect. Google has made setup and usage simple. Your document is always available offline, which is a significant benefit over SharePoint \u2013 and one day I intend to post on how poorly Microsoft\u2019s SharePoint Workspace 2010 performs both in features and usability. Sharing a document with others is as easy as with other types of Google documents.<\/p>\n

The main issue is the disconnect between Office documents and Google documents, and I can see this causing confusion.<\/p>\n

Update<\/strong>: I uninstalled Cloud Connect after a couple of days. Two reasons. First, the chunky toolbar is annoying and takes valuable working space. Second, I had performance issues when working with documents opened from SharePoint. I guess the two do not get on well together.<\/p>\n

Microsoft has its own unsurprisingly negative take on the product here<\/a>. Apparently Cloud Connect uses the Track Changes feature under the covers, hence breaking this feature for any other purpose. If so, I would like to have been warned about this. On the other hand, I still like the usability of Cloud Connect. Microsoft is right to observe that auto-sync could result in inadvertent document sharing; but the simple and prominent sharing dialog is easier to use than SharePoint permissions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Google has released Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office, and I gave it a quick try. Cloud Connect is a plug-in for Microsoft Office which installs a toolbar into Word, Excel and PowerPoint. There is no way that I can see to hide the toolbar. Every time you work in Office you will see Google\u2019s logo. … Continue reading Hands on with Google Cloud Connect: Microsoft docs in Google\u2019s cloud<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,36,76],"tags":[422,589,821],"class_list":["post-3939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cloud-computing","category-google","category-sharepoint","tag-google","tag-microsoft-office","tag-sharepoint"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3939\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}