Office 2013 is now available to download in a preview version, so its users already know that the next version of Microsoft"s productivity software suite also has SkyDrive features. Today, Microsoft offered up more details on how its SkyDrive cloud-based storage service will be integrated and used in Office 2013.
In a new post on the Office Next blog, Microsoft points out that saving an Office document to a SkyDrive account should be no different than saving the same file on a PC hard drive. It states, "Like other default locations in File Explorer, such as the Documents Library, the SkyDrive experience is accessible from other Windows applications and available offline."
If you want to read and/or edit an Office file you have created on another PC, you can log into your SkyDrive account and edit that same file you have synced with your home PC with Office Web Apps or even with the current Office 2010 suite. Microsoft states, "This is a major advantage of saving to your local hard drive because it gives you access to your documents wherever you sign into Office, and this approach is also a huge improvement over the cloud solutions that force you to stay online to do anything."
But what if you have a bad online connection while you are traveling, but you still have to edit and sync up your Office documents for a big presentation? Microsoft says that any file uploads to your SkyDrive account are handled asynchronously by Office 2013. It states:
Therefore, if you are working on your document from a coffee shop with a weak WiFi signal, you will be able to continue making changes to the file while uploads are in progress. This ensures that the performance and latency associated with editing Office documents is not affected by the bandwidth, latency or even availability of your network connection.
Office 2013 will also let people know if they are working on files while they are also offline and can even alert Office 2013 users of any changes that have been made to documents that are awaiting an upload to their SkyDrive account.
Microsoft has also made sure that editing any Office 2013 documents will take up as little bandwidth as possible. It states, "For example, if you are working on a 50 MB PowerPoint presentation and decide to insert a new bullet point, Office will only upload that single bullet point."
Source: Office Next blog | Image via Microsoft