MICROSOFT OFFICE USERS can now save to and open from Google Drive, giving them another cloud service to sync with. Microsoft’s OneDrive storage is built into Office applications, but now Google is getting in on the act with its Drive plug-in for Microsoft Office.

Once installed, the plug-in lets you save and open files in Google Drive as you would from OneDrive, although there are limitations. Files must be saved as .doc or .docx to open in Word, for example, and files created in Google Docs aren’t compatible with Office applications.

In truth, it’s not much different to having Google Drive installed on the PC, but if you don’t want to sync your Google Drive locally, this new plug-in lets you access individual files stored online.

Microsoft has been cooperating with rival cloud storage services recently. Earlier this year it added Dropbox support to its Office apps for iOS and Android, and Dropbox is also integrated with Microsoft Office Online, so users can edit files stored in Dropbox using the browser-based versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Microsoft is currently beta testing Office 2016, the next generation of the Office desktop software, and has created new Office Mobile apps for Windows 10, which consume a fraction of the storage space of the full desktop suite at the expense of many advanced features.