Google Docs Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office Now Available

GoogleDocs official blog announced on Thursday that Google is releasing the final version of a new plug-in, named Cloud Connect, for Microsoft Office users that will automatically sync their documents to Google Docs. With Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office plug-in, Google brings collaborative multi-person editing to the familiar Microsoft Office experience. Functionality of this plug-in is like that of Microsoft’s Office Web Apps functionality and sync to SkyDrive.

The plug-in is available today and will work on Office 2003, Office 2007 and Office 2010. It will allow users to automatically backup a copy of their Word documents into Google Docs. Google says its plug-in will backup documents to Google Apps each time a user saves a document in Microsoft Office.

The plug-in allows multiple users to collaborate and edit Office docs. Multiple people can edit documents and have their changes synced at each save. Despite the collaboration features, the document editing isn’t real-time. Google will prompt users to resolve sync conflicts on multi-user documents.

Google’s Cloud Connect introduces a new toolbar into the Office UI which also provides a public Google Docs link to the document you have open. This enables authors to simply share the link for an online version of their document. The toolbar also displays the sync status of the document and a sync button to save the most recent changes. Changes will also be saved when a user clicks the ‘save’ button in Microsoft Office. Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office also remembers edits if the user is offline to sync the documents once a net connection becomes available again.

Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office is available for download (Update: Not available any more, the download link will take you to the announcement post).

Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office Featured Videos:

Overview

Collaborative editing

Revision history

Share a doc

Resolve overlapping edits

Edit offline

Syncing to the cloud

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