While it’s a great step for Google Apps, editing Google documents offline is still a very restricted experience compared to editing documents with Microsoft Office on the desktop. This is a great advance for commuters while travelling with intermittent mobile connections to the internet. Any changes made offline with sync with the online version once the connection is restored automatically there’s no need to reload the document. The main window in Google Drive (called the Document List) then shows syncing status with the files on your computer.Ī user without an internet connection can still open and edit a document from the list of offline files and create a new one. Users must install a web application in their Chrome browsers (the feature is only available to Chrome) to enable offline access. Google has sought to level the field with this upgrade to Google Apps. Microsoft touts the ability to edit documents offline as a key selling point for its Google Apps competitor, Office 365. One of Google’s biggest announcements at its annual developer conference was that you could now edit Google documents without an internet connection.
