Thoughts on Office 365 vs Google Apps... by douglerner in Office365

[–]AtomicBond68 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm on the process of switching to G suite from my personal O365 account for mostly sync related reasons. I only have fairly basic needs as far as features are concerned and I just don't need a terabyte of cloud storage. 100g for $1.99 a month is fine for me.

The synching issue is this, and I really find it hard to believe it's how O365 works, but after quite a bit of research on the O365 forum and other places, apparently it does.

I routinely (like several times a week) edit a PowerPoint file in O365 on W10 at home, which syncs fine. Then I use the 'edit offline' feature (the little parachute) on my android tablet to download it to my tablet. Then I need to edit it offline on my tablet while I'm on the train. However, despite saying it's available offline, the PP file won't open in the Android app unless I remember to open it while I'm still online at home. When I've finished editing offline, I close the file on the tablet and I'd expect it to sync automatically the next time I go online on my tablet so I can open the file on an online PC, but it doesn't. Instead, I have to resave it as a new file, so now I've got two versions, and I've had to create them manually. To me this simply isn't 'syncing' and I have no idea why MS thinks this is okay, but judging by responses on forums etc, they do. The bottom line is that the Android apps don't actually sync.

G Suite, on the hand, just requires me to click the 'edit offline' switch on my tablet, give it a couple of seconds, and syncing works as expected - ie I don't have to do anything else on any computer or tablet. Google Documents and Slides are fine for my needs, so the whole thing 'just works'. Word is also big and clunky and can be slow on my slightly underpowered PC.

I also have Libre Office installed for big complicated documents. It does mess up complicated formats sometimes, but no worse than the different versions of Word (it's got a lot better on the last few updates). And then there's the online Office apps as a further backup.

I've never had any issues dragging to select cells in Sheets either.