Google Drive now supports opening and viewing password-protected Microsoft Office files.

Today Google Drive for Android has been updated with Google's cloud storage service now supporting opening and viewing password-protected Microsoft office files. This is a great addition for all of us using Microsoft Office. The latter remains the gold standard as productivity tools with users and enterprises alike and it's great to see Google adding more support to the world's number one productivity tool.

Now, no matter how useful this feature is to Google Drive users, I have a word of advice. Password-protecting an Excel, Word or PowerPoint file prevent others from accessing these files and that is good. However, Microsoft cannot help you retrieve the password should you forget it. There is no official tool from Microsoft. So make sure that you use a password that is memorable, otherwise, you'll have to resort to third-party solutions, some of which are free and some not. In either case, that implies making your files and content available to whichever solution you choose. Definitely not a secure way to retrieve your password and protect your content.

This update also includes the usual bug fixes and performance improvements and is available in Google Play Store for download.

Google updates Docs, Sheets and Slides with new formatting tools.

                

Google has updated its productivity suite today and in case you’ve never considered Google Docs, Sheets and Slides, you should do so for the very simple fact that they are free to use on any Android device. Of course, they do not offer the powerful features found in Microsoft Office, but what makes Google products interesting are their simplicity of use and collaborative features.

In this update, Google added the following features:

Google Docs: Easily format tables, images and drawings with new toolbar items.

Google Sheets: Easily format images and shapes with new toolbar items.

Google Slides: Easily format images and shapes with new toolbar items. 

These features are already available in the Android version of Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint, but if you’re a Google user, you will find these new formatting features useful.

Microsoft updates Excel, PowerPoint & Word for Android. Excel can open files that contain form controls.

Today Microsoft has updated Excel, PowerPoint and Word for Android. 

In Excel, the software giant added support for form controls. Excel for Android will be able to open files that contain form controls. If you're wondering what are form controls, here's a short explanation from Microsoft:

"You use Form controls when you want to easily reference and interact with cell data without using VBA code, and when you want to add controls to chart sheets. For example, after you add a list box control to a worksheet and linking it to a cell, you can return a numeric value for the current position of the selected item in the control."

PowerPoint gets a new feature that lets users share one slide instead of the whole presentation - which is very convenient. Microsoft also added support for Office Lens to capture whiteboards and add them to a slide.

Word also gets support for Office Lens capture of Whiteboards to add to your documents after cleaning up and cropping the capture.

Download: Excel   PowerPoint   Word