If you work with multiple computers and devices, and especially if
you collaborate with other writers, then the combination of SkyDrive and
Office 2013 is fantastic. Got an email with an attached document or
some notes you've started making? Save the file on SkyDrive (you can
even do that from your phone in some cases); not only can you open it in
Word on your PC and carry on working, but it will appear in the recent
documents list on the File menu in Office 2013 so it's easy to find.
If you're working on a document with someone else, both of you can
open it from SkyDrive and edit it at the same time. Yes, that's useful,
because you're often adding different things to the document. You don't
get the other person's changes until you both save the document, so
you're not distracted by half-finished thoughts or false starts. And you
can't change the paragraph someone else is already working in, so
nothing gets overwritten. You can use Track Changes to see and revert
changes, and if you work in Simple Markup view you won't feel like
you're drowning in a sea of red-lined corrections and you can make
changes without worrying about losing your favourite sentence. Don't
worry about slips of the finger: SkyDrive has a recycle bin, so as long
as you turn on the setting in Word to make a backup you can even go back
and retrieve a paragraph the other person deleted without turning on
Track Changes (or if they accepted their change before you got a chance
to check it).
With SkyDrive syncing files to all your PCs as you change them, this
can quickly become your natural way of working, although it's not so
successful when you're working in a folder that someone has shared from
their own SkyDrive because you can't get that to sync to your PC. (The
SkyDrive team tells us that this is feedback they've heard a lot; they
said the same about being able to sync only selected folders shortly
before that feature was introduced, so fingers crossed that they're
working on it.)
Windows RT: a sync hole
But when you use Windows RT, this effortless flow from device to device and person to person judders to a halt anytime you're not online. You can't sync files from SkyDrive to Windows RT (unless they're OneNote notebooks, which can sync and be available offline, meaning that this is perfectly possible on RT — even in Windows Store apps). The only way to take files with you is to open them in Office; any changes you made get synced back when you reconnect, making a mockery of the idea that Windows RT can't sync to SkyDrive. It's just that Microsoft hasn't enabled it.
But when you use Windows RT, this effortless flow from device to device and person to person judders to a halt anytime you're not online. You can't sync files from SkyDrive to Windows RT (unless they're OneNote notebooks, which can sync and be available offline, meaning that this is perfectly possible on RT — even in Windows Store apps). The only way to take files with you is to open them in Office; any changes you made get synced back when you reconnect, making a mockery of the idea that Windows RT can't sync to SkyDrive. It's just that Microsoft hasn't enabled it.
I had fully expected sync to come to Windows RT via the Windows Store
SkyDrive app that's preinstalled, as soon as the SkyDrive desktop app
on Windows 8 added folder-selective sync. (Again, OneNote for Windows 8
syncs to and from SkyDrive so it's perfectly possible for a WinRT app to
do that — it doesn't have to be a desktop sync tool.) I'm hoping that
this is also just a matter of time, because it's the difference between
the cloud being as inconvenient as any other file store you're not
permanently connected to and a seamless workflow that I've come to
depend on in just a few short months.
Of course, without a desktop SkyDrive sync tool in Windows RT, other
apps are excluded as well — even when you're online. Want to save an
image onto SkyDrive from Windows RT? You have to save it locally and
then use the upload button in the SkyDrive app.
Annoyingly, you'll see SkyDrive folders you've used in Office showing
up in Explorer and in the file dialogs of desktop programs like Paint
and Notepad, in the Recent places section. Don't click on them though —
just trying to open those folders will crash Explorer, Paint and Notepad
every time, with the kind of Runtime error dialog that will make you
think you're still using Windows 95. Crash Explorer this way and the
whole desktop can lock up for a few seconds (it does come back again, so
be patient rather than jumping straight to the power button).
I'm sure there's a perfectly good technical explanation for the crash
and the vintage error message. But this is a bad experience that feels
like the first real bug we've found in Windows RT, and it underlines the
fact that cloud connections, which should be a strength for Windows RT,
are a bit of an Achilles heel. Apart from OneNote, none of the cloud
services you can use on Windows RT sync — and neither the YouSendIt app
nor the website let you upload files from Windows RT.
(The website wants Flash and isn't on the Microsoft whitelist yet,
and the app doesn't implement a file picker — that's not Microsoft's
fault, and there's even a tool I could use to hack the whitelist file
and add it myself. But it's another service that's part of my workflow
that doesn't transfer to Windows RT. I'm a fan of YouSendIt because I
can send files that are too large for email and have them automatically
expire in a week, so I don’t have to go back and delete them by hand to
stay under my 2GB limit. I'm sure I can find other ways of doing this,
but I was happy with the workflow I already had and it's frustrating
because I can't see a reason why it shouldn't just work.)
Windows RT should be the perfect way to take the cloud with you and
do real work. Even for Office 2013 RT, that's just a pipe dream so far.
Windows RT is a young platform that needs developers to support it to
avoid these frustrations — and Microsoft needs to be the poster child
for having all its services work fully. The good news: it's just
software and it should be easy to change.
Update
Thanks to everyone who suggested their favourite cloud storage
service. Several of them have Windows Store apps; but none of them to
sync to give you offline access to files (or to allow you to create a
file offline and have it automatically uploaded to the cloud service).
Thanks for sharing the tips about mapping SkyDrive to a drive letter;
for access when you're online it's useful and avoids the bug where
selecting a SkyDrive folder in Explorer crashes the desktop application
you select it from.
If you're wondering about using Office RT for commercial work, check out the many ways you can get commercial rights as covered by our ZDNet colleague Ed Bott.
Several people noted the offline capabilities of Office RT; this works
only for documents you open when you're online and leave open. If you
have 19 chapters in the book you're writing, you could open all 19
documents before you get to somewhere where you don't have a connection,
but if you restart your device you can't access those documents again
until you're back online. Windows RT tablets are mobile devices and
there are plenty of places where you don't get connectivity - like a
transatlantic flight...
And for the record, I'm a fan of Windows RT; it's good enough that I
want it to be better and support all the ways I need to work.
Nice Post. Thanks for sharing informative information.
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Heard that microsoft is no longer producing any RT devices. But it was a good and informative article. Thanks for posting. Regards Think to Share, a leading Digital marketing company in Kolkata
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