How To Do Cloud Apps With Microsoft
Microsoft's Office cloud apps and storage are one of the Web's best-kept secrets. Why settle for Google Docs?
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How does 25GB of free online storage, a free version of Microsoft Office (including OneNote), file access on mobile devices, and an automatic synced backup of up to 5GB on your PCs and Macs sound to you? Too good to be true? All of this is available right now if you have or are willing to create a Microsoft Live ID.
Before we go on, just a friendly reminder: Storing sensitive or confidential material in the cloud can be a risky proposition and might violate legal obligations. Check with your management before using any cloud storage service for information that belongs to an entity other than you.
The key to all this functionality is Microsoft's SkyDrive service, which provides 25GB of free file storage. You can see the relationship between SkyDrive and other Microsoft services and software as well as mobile devices in the diagram above. You can upload and store files of any type to SkyDrive using a simple Web interface. Once there, files can be manipulated: move, copy, edit, rename, or download them. SkyDrive also provides access to and storage for the free Microsoft Office Web Apps service. Office Web Apps includes versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote that run in major Web browsers including Firefox and Chrome.
The Web versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote will look familiar and feel comfortable to anyone who has used Office 2007 or 2010's ribbon interface. These Web versions provide only a small subset of the features in the full desktop versions. However, this subset should be sufficient for the majority of writing tasks that do not require complex formatting. Styles, tables, and picture insertion are all supported. You do not need to have the desktop versions of Microsoft Office for Windows or Mac OS X installed to use Office Web Apps in a supported browser. However, if you do have the desktop versions, you have the option to smoothly move editing from the Web app to the full desktop version when using Internet Explorer under Windows. (Users of other browsers can download the file and then manually upload with a few extra steps.)
If you transition from Office Web Apps Word in Internet Explorer to, for example, Microsoft Word 2010, saving the edited Word document is as simple as clicking Save. (It's the same command as saving to a local drive.) However, if the file originated in an Office Web App, the save takes a bit longer because it saves the file to SkyDrive first.
If you use a smart phone based on Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango), you can access and edit Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote documents stored in SkyDrive using the built-in Office mobile apps. Photographs can be automatically uploaded to SkyDrive over 3G or WiFi. Video must be manually uploaded.
Microsoft has free standalone SkyDrive apps for both Windows Phone (left) and iPhone. You can edit documents when using the SkyDrive app for Windows Phone. However, the iPhone version can only be used for viewing. The app is not a universal app that scales for the iPad's larger display--but you can use the "2x" manual scaling for use on an iPad.
One last interesting Office Web Apps feature is the ability to share documents by embedding them directly in Web pages. This allows anyone to view an Office document without needing a special SkyDrive Web link or login.
Microsoft's Windows Live Mesh has a relationship with SkyDrive, too. Windows Live Mesh is a peer-to-peer sharing service that lets you designate hard (or solid-state drive) drive folders on your PC or Mac for sharing over the cloud. Here's the interesting part: folders also can be synced between a local drive and SkyDrive. Up to 5GB of SkyDrive's 25GB cloud storage quota can be used for this Windows Live Mesh cloud sync--which works in a way similar to Dropbox. However, it is limited to using the free native apps for Windows or Mac OS X and desktop browsers. Neither the Windows Phone nor the iPhone SkyDrive apps can see or use Windows Live Mesh folders synced with SkyDrive.
One unfortunate limitation of SkyDrive compared to the competition is the lack of built-in support for accessing it as a Windows share. As seen above, DropBox does support this, as do others. This capability lets you access files with standard Windows tools and any Windows app that can access a share. There are third-party hacks that set up the SkyDrive as a WebDAV share, but these do not inspire confidence and are not supported by Microsoft. The lack of share support is surprising coming from Microsoft.
The combination of Microsoft SkyDrive, Office Web Apps, Windows Live Mesh, and native apps for the iPhone and Windows Phone results in a powerful set of tools for keeping documents and files of all types synced and almost always available. The price is right--everything's free--so why not check these services out?
The combination of Microsoft SkyDrive, Office Web Apps, Windows Live Mesh, and native apps for the iPhone and Windows Phone results in a powerful set of tools for keeping documents and files of all types synced and almost always available. The price is right--everything's free--so why not check these services out?
How does 25GB of free online storage, a free version of Microsoft Office (including OneNote), file access on mobile devices, and an automatic synced backup of up to 5GB on your PCs and Macs sound to you? Too good to be true? All of this is available right now if you have or are willing to create a Microsoft Live ID.
Before we go on, just a friendly reminder: Storing sensitive or confidential material in the cloud can be a risky proposition and might violate legal obligations. Check with your management before using any cloud storage service for information that belongs to an entity other than you.
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