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General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: downer on May 31, 2019, 11:17:26 AM

Title: Office365 vs Google Apps
Post by: downer on May 31, 2019, 11:17:26 AM
I asked this on the technology thread but no responses, so I'm trying again with a thread of its own.

I'm increasingly pushed to use Office OneDrive because that's where some school docs get stored, and then opening them often takes me to Office365. Similarly with docs in email which is now in Outlook.

I also increasingly use Google Docs/Sheets and others in their suite to create documents -- attendance lists, short memos, drafts of longer pieces I want to write.

I find the Google Docs software easier to use than Office365 version of Word. Using a full word processor is better than both, but I find sometimes it is a lot simpler just to use one of the online approaches and open a doc through an app or on a webpage.  But sometimes I have to think hard about where I've stored a doc -- in Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, maybe just in an email, or occasionally on some hard drive. It's getting confusing.
Title: Re: Office365 vs Google Apps
Post by: Kron3007 on May 31, 2019, 11:36:47 AM
I use Office OneDrive and google apps as well.  I would probably use google more, or even exclusively, but our university e-mail etc uses OneDrive, so it is often more convenient for many things.  I find shared word files to be problematic compared to google docs.  Perhaps it is just me, but even after I give people access, they often have trouble editing files.  Google is much easier I find.
Title: Re: Office365 vs Google Apps
Post by: spork on May 31, 2019, 02:13:44 PM
My employer's IT unit has pushed Office 365 and OneDrive as a "solution" for A to Z. I used OneDrive once to test how to upload and edit a document. I didn't like it. Word 365 isn't as functional as desktop Word. And email lacks basic features I use in desktop Outlook. I find Google products more functional and intuitive. When I assign collaborative tasks to students, they invariably use Google Docs or Slides. This past semester during classroom presentations, I noticed one team had a slideshow stored on one student's OneDrive account. That was a first.
Title: Re: Office365 vs Google Apps
Post by: eigen on May 31, 2019, 08:04:58 PM
My school is all in with google suite (email, docs, drive) so I'm moving to using that. I don't hate it, but I don't love it yet either.

I work offline a lot, and that's challenging with google docs.
Title: Re: Office365 vs Google Apps
Post by: polly_mer on June 01, 2019, 06:07:34 AM
I dislike most of the tools for sharing that I've tried.  The Mac/Windows/Linux divide has gotten smaller over the years, but the shared documents stored remotely have problems.

My best results recently have been checking out from a shared GitHub repo, using a full-fledged tool that resides on someone's desktop, and checking back in instead of messing with the online, fewer functions and possibly editing at the same time confusion.
Title: Re: Office365 vs Google Apps
Post by: pink_ on June 06, 2019, 07:29:56 AM
I prefer O365 because Word offers more functionality than Google Docs. I can use both for free through my institution. GDocs makes collaboration easier, but it lacks a lot of the refinements of Word. It also lacks a Grammar check. I don't need the Grammar reinforcements, but it's usually very clear which of my students uses Word and which go for Docs. They also have access to 365, but they usually don't know about it so default to Google.
Title: Re: Office365 vs Google Apps
Post by: downer on June 11, 2019, 05:50:24 AM
Logging on to Google Docs today, I got a message that it now checks for spelling and grammar.