Just under a year ago, Microsoft announced that it was opening up Office to allow deeper integration with third-party cloud storage providers. Today, the company revealed that it is expanding on that commitment further, with new options becoming available across multiple platforms.
Outlook users on iOS and Android have been able to share and access content from Box and Dropbox - as well as Microsoft"s own OneDrive cloud service - for some time, but today, the company announced that it is bringing Box and Dropbox integration to Outlook.com as well:
In the coming weeks, users of the new Outlook.com can attach files from Dropbox, Box and OneDrive right from their inboxes and they have the option to send these files either as traditional attachments or as cloud-based links.
Note that you"ll need to have been upgraded to the new Outlook Mail Preview on the web to be able to take advantage of that new feature, as it won"t be available to the majority of users still on the older version of Outlook.com.
The announcement follows the launch this week of Dropbox"s new app on Windows 10 PCs, which includes support for Windows Hello password-free biometric authentication.
Additionally, Office Online users can now take advantage of new real-time co-authoring features for documents stored on Box, Citrix ShareFile, Dropbox and Egnute.
Other partners on Microsoft"s Cloud Storage Partner Program (CSPP) can "enable real-time co-authoring using standard interfaces" from today too.
Microsoft also announced an expansion of the deep cloud storage integration that it"s previously offered in Office on iOS and Android, which began with Dropbox. From today, it"s allowing other CSPP providers to offer similar integration in Office on iOS:
This integration lets users designate these partner cloud services as “places” in Office, just as they can with Microsoft OneDrive and Dropbox. Users can now browse for PowerPoint, Word and Excel files on their favorite cloud service right from within an Office app. They can open, edit or create in these apps with confidence that their files will be updated right in the cloud. Users can also open Office files from their cloud storage app in Office, then save any changes directly back to the cloud. We’ll follow with other mobile platforms later this year.
This integration is now available with Box on iOS, but Microsoft says that other partners, including Citrix ShareFile, Edmodo and Egnyte, will soon offer similar functionality in Office apps on iOS devices.
Source: Office Blogs