Google Docs offline extension for Google Chrome – Create and Edit documents

Google Docs offline extension for Google Chrome – create and edit documents

Google Documents, Sheets and Slides are now very popular and alternative of Microsoft Word, Excel and Power Point. But the drawback of Google Drive is that you have to work online in Google Drive to edit documents.

There are no such apps available for Google Drive as like MS Office to edit documents in your PC, though you can sync documents to Google Drive using their app.

If you want to edit create and edit documents offline there is solution for this using Google Docs offline extension for Google Chrome.

Before going ahead make sure that Google Chrome is installed in your PC, you have logged in Google chrome using your Google account. Further this feature will not work in in private window. You should work in normal Chrome tab.

It is desirable for security of your documents that you should not enable or use offline Google Drive extension on public computers.

Steps for editing documents offline using Google Docs offline extension

• Download and install offline extension for Google chrome using this page or search “office editing for docs” in Chrome Web Store.

• After installing, enable this extension if not enabled by default using Chrome Settings> Extensions.

• When extension is added, you can edit any documents (.doc , .docx), excel files ( .xls , .xlsx) and power point (.ppt , .pptx) files using Google Chrome browser. Just drag and drop the file inside the new tab of chrome.

The file format will also not been change after editing, you can upload the documents to Google Drive after editing or can save them in local storage.

If you want to save the file after editing in local storage that is also possible. For this you have to first save the document locally.

When you save the document, it will be shown as OOXML text document, but you need not to worry. If you have MS office installed you can still open this file using MS office format.

If you want to edit the existing Google Drive documents, sheets, slides follow the following steps.

Steps for editing Google Drive existing documents offline

• Download this Google Docs offline extension for Google chrome.
• After adding this extension go to Google Drive settings : https://drive.google.com/drive/my-drive .
• Here you have to enable offline mode to create and edit document.

After enabling these settings, make the documents available offline by right click on the document and select as “available at offline”.

To open your offline documents, open drive.google.com in chrome browser, it will take some time but will opened. You will see the folders as like online mode here, but the only files will be visible here which you have marked earlier available as offline.

You can edit now offline, and when you will be online your changes will be automatically synced with Google Drive.