Instructify

BY BILL FERRIS

Just because Google and Microsoft hate each other doesn’t mean their software can’t work together in harmony. OffiSync lets you create, access, edit and save Google Docs from Microsoft Office.

While Microsoft Office Live Workspace already lets you save your files in the cloud, being able to play nice with Google has its advantages. While I love the ubiquity of Google Docs, I still prefer the features of MS Office. But by saving as a Google Doc, I can access my files on non-Office-enabled computers, or even on my phone. Plus, OffiSync enables easy collaboration between different users. It’s the best of both worlds.

Using OffiSync allows you and your students greater flexibility in creating and collaborating on projects. It also goes one step further into turning your Google Docs account into an online file server, meaning you can get at syllabi, assignments, or your resume from anywhere.

OffiSync isn’t without its glitches, though. Saving an existing Word doc with double-spaced text as a Google doc messed up the format. It was easily fixable, but a small hassle. Also, some of my existing Google documents turned out a little wonky when I opened them in MS Word — I think the bullet points threw it off. This problem didn’t occur when saving the same file from Word to Google Docs, nor did it reappear when I opened the Google Doc again in Word. I didn’t have any such problems with spreadsheets.

OffiSync is still in Beta, meaning these are the exact sorts of problems I imagine they’re working on for the final release. And frankly, it’s not that big of a hardship. Being able to access any file on any machine is worth a few minor headaches in my book.

OffiSync

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