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MS Word and Google

Using Microsoft Office documents in Google Drive is possible, but can be tricky.

It is certainly easier to just work on joint documents in G drive if they are G docs and work on joint Microsoft documents on a network drive.  Some notes on what happens when you do that:
  • When two people are editing a Google doc, it will show what each is typing and you can see the revision history.  All changes are being saved automatically
  • When two people try to work in a Word document, Word will only let one edit at a time.  The second one trying to open it will receive a message saying who has it open, and say you can only have a "read only" copy. 
If you try to share a Word document on Google, you can, but if someone opens it, the default is in Google docs and it will make a new copy as a Google Doc and people then can get confused on which is the latest version.  
You can get a Chrome browser add on, that allows you to edit the Word document and it will stay a Word document. But, you can't have two people edit that document.  Google says:  To edit Microsoft Office files with others, you'll need to convert them to Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides.

Documents on the K drive are backed up by IT nightly and kept for 2 weeks
Documents on Google drive that are deleted are kept in Google's trashcan until you permanently delete them. 


And Mary says that if you put MS Office docs that you want to print in Google drive, it can mess with the formatting, so you will want to use a network drive if you want someone else to print your document

So again I would say it is easier and better to just work on joint documents in G drive if they are G docs and work on joint Microsoft documents on a network drive.
But if you want to try working with Office docs on Google drive here are some links:
    1. One version of instructions
    2. Another version   
    3. Video of Managing Revisions of non Google files in Google Drive
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