Google has been working to improve Office integration with its own services. It only recently made it possible for users to edit Office documents stored on Google Drive without converting them. Mobile users can now directly edit them via Docs, Sheets, and Slides apps. And today, Google is making it simpler to edit Office files in Gmail attachments.
How to Edit Office Documents from Gmail
Currently, when you receive an Office file attachment in Gmail, you see two options i.e Download and Add to Drive. You need to add the document to Drive to edit it and then download it before replying back to the sender. Starting today, you will see a new ‘Edit with Slides/ Docs/ Sheets’ button (depending on the document type) when you hover over the attachment.
Clicking the edit button will see you directly jump into the editing interface with Google’s office suite. The company will now remember the e-mail to which the Office file was attached and show a new ‘Email’ option under the ‘File’ menu. You can select the ‘Reply with this file’ once you’ve edited the document. This will take you back to Gmail, with the newly edited documents attached in a reply to the original email.
New Office Formatting Options
Besides the Gmail integration, Google continues to add support for more formatting options used in Office documents. It has announced mixed page orientation support for Docs. This means you can now edit documents with portrait and landscape pages. Sheets gets a new Macro conversion add-on to make it easier for users to move from Excel over to Google’s office suite.
Google will also make it possible to add images/ watermarks behind the text in Docs next year. This could be a boon for enterprise users. The aforesaid Office documents editing feature in Gmail has started rolling out to Google Workspace (previously known as G Suite) users today.
