Last week we looked at the confusion regarding the many choices with Microsoft Office. I said I would have another solution for Lindsey and you this week.
Here are two more good options. Office Live or OneDrive (formerly known as SkyDrive) depending on where you read about it or Google Drive (drive.google.com or just get there from any Google product you are logged into.) Either of these are very good online solutions. There are many ways to get Office Live. I suggest using Live.com. There you can sign up for a free Outlook.com email account which gives you access to everything you need. You can also sign up with Yahoo! or Gmail accounts; although I have not experimented with those. If you already signed in to other MS devices like a Windows PC, tablet, phone, Xbox Live, Outlook.com, or OneDrive, use that account to sign in. Once there you can view and use your email, address book, calendar, online drive Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. To get to these click the labeled down arrow in the upper-left corner of the window. Any of the files created can be stored in OneDrive so that you can retrieve them from any online computer. They are all saved in the default MS Office formats so you can easily share them via email, etc.
Very similar products are available with a Google/Gmail account. Setup a free account or you can use one you already have. Once logged in click the "Apps" button in the upper-right corner that looks like a small tic-tac-toe pattern, and then select "Drive." You have a create button on this screen where you may choose from Document, Presentation, Spreadsheet, Form and several others depending on what you normally use with Google. The files you create here are saved on your Google Drive for later retrieval just as in Live.com.
Even though I am a Google fan boy, Google is not quite friendly to Microsoft Office file types. That being said they work with MS products; they just take an extra step or two. There are several ways to do this but they all require you to download the file to your local computer. I suggest finding your file in the file list, right click on it and choose download. You will be presented with a choice of what file type you want to use, so choose "Microsoft Word. (.docx) You will then have it in your downloaded files to share as a standard Word doc.
Another note regarding Google docs. When right clicked you may also choose to "Share" the file. If you choose email as an attachment you once again can choose the file format and MS Word is one of the choices.
Now the final note. OneNote is a terrific app available only with the Microsoft suite. If you are interested let me know via email and I will share that with you in the future.
There are many other options and features in both Microsoft and Google online offerings. Lindsey chose to try both and make a final decision later. How about you?
