Google’s Quickoffice Eases the Transition to Google Apps

Ease the transition to Google Apps with Google’s Quickoffice apps and get 10GB of Google Drive storage free.

Following Google’s purchase of Quickoffice in 2012, the company has released updated QuickOffice apps for iOS and Android and for good measure have included an additional free 10GB of Google Drive storage for two years. QuickOffice lets you create and edit Microsoft Office documents (Word, Excel, and Powerpoint) and annotate PDFs on your smartphone or tablet. A Quickoffice app for Chrome and Chrome OS is currently in testing and is set to be released soon.

It might seem odd that Google would release a second office suite in addition to Google Docs, however, Quickoffice is targeted at smoothing the transition to Google Apps for those users embeded in the Microsoft Office ecosystem. Quickoffice handles Microsoft Office documents better than Google Docs and provides many features missing from Google’s online offering. It’s likely that Google will merge many of Quickoffice’s features into Google Docs at some point in the future.

Why Use QuickOffice?

Schools using Google Apps have probably noticed some limitations to the web apps. Examples include, limited spreadsheet rows, problems converting complex Microsoft Office documents to Google Docs, and complex Excel formulas not being supported. Google wants to remove any reason users should have to use Microsoft Office, and QuickOffice is a step in the right direction.

Quickoffice is also useful when emailing documents to those who may struggle with Google Documents. Sometimes emailing a .DOCX file is still the simplest way.

Quickoffice provides a solution to many of these problems and allows for editing of Word, Excel, and Powerpoint files without the need to have Microsoft Office installed.

How Does QuickOffice Work?

You sign in to Quickoffice with your Google Account and can then access any documents on your local device or stored in your Google Drive. Other cloud storage providers are not supported.

The older paid versions of QuickOffice have been removed from the App Store and Google Play. While users can still use the previous versions of QuickOffice the apps will no longer be updated.

It’s worth noting that documents created in QuickOffice reduce your Google Drive storage quota, Google Docs do not.

Install Quickoffice for Android

Install Quickoffice for iPad or iPhone

Quickoffice for Chrome is currently only available via the Chrome developer channel, but once fully available will make a compelling Office alternative for schools.