Making friends between Google Apps and MS Office

Since most of us still use Microsoft Office for a variety of things, here are a few ways to work with MS Office documents in Google Drive.

Friends foreveer

First, you can convert Office files to Google very easily -- now with one click from a Gmail attachment, or with one click from Google Drive. This gives you the additional benefit of just one document to manage and access from anywhere. Google has upgraded the supported Office formats, so most documents can convert easily (not just MS Word, PowerPoint and Excel).

But sometimes, you want to be able to edit an Office file from within Google Drive without converting it. In order to do this, you'll need to install the Google Office Editor Chrome extension, which you can find here, and be using the new Drive. Once you have this extension, you can double-click on any MS Office document and open it in Office Compatibility Mode to make and save edits in MS Office format.

Of course, you can convert it to Google format at any time as well.

Here's a brief video tutorial of the process, and a link to Google's help page about Office Compatibility Mode as well.