Google will open Office documents in edit mode, a boon for Chromebooks

Credit: Google

Starting in late November, Google is making a small, but critical, change to the way Google Drive opens Microsoft Office documents, both on the web and on Chromebooks: they will open immediately in Office edit mode.

Chrome Unboxed, which noted the change in Google’s Workspace suite, also correctly characterized the change as essential to the way users interact with Microsoft 365 or Office documents within Chromebooks.

As a freelancer who has used Chromebox for over a year, the only shortcoming of Google Drive was that it opened a Microsoft Office document in preview mode, preventing you from editing the document. You can download the document and then edit it, but that was two extra steps, and not always obvious. As Chrome Unboxed pointed out, that helped Chromebooks gain an “Office can’t be edited” reputation that hasn’t completely disappeared. The Google setting means that you can open and edit a new document in a Google application immediately.

The change will apply to all supported Office file types, according to Google, including .docx, .doc, .ppt, .pptx, .xls, .xlsx, and .xlsm. If the “Office Edition for Docs, Sheets and Slides” Chrome extension is installed, Google will redirect to the extension and not Docs, Sheets, or Slides. Password protected files will be an exception: they will go to Sheets and will open in preview mode.

The change will essentially affect all Workspace / Google Drive users, including those with personal Google accounts, as well as business users. However, it will take some time to implement: Rapid Release domains will receive the new functionality on October 27, but the normal scheduled release will begin on November 30 and continue from there.