How to edit A Docx File
Edit Word .docx files in Google Docs using Office Compatibility Mode
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hello everyone this is Ian Lamont i'm
the author of Google Drive and Doc's in
30 minutes
today gonna be talking about something
called office compatibility mode for
Google Docs and basically this is a
feature in Google Docs that lets you
edit Microsoft Word documents which of
course is a really useful feature to
have you don't need to get Microsoft
Word in order to edit it but there are
some limitations as I will describe
shortly let's get started the first
thing you need to know about using
Google Docs in office compatibility mode
in order to edit Microsoft Word
documents is you need a special
extension to find extensions you go to
the chrome menu go to window and choose
extensions and you'll be presented with
a list of all of the extensions which
are like little plugins that are
attached to Chrome to make it do extra
things and if you scroll down you can
take a look and see if you already have
it installed maybe you do
it's called office editing for Docs
sheets and slides now if you don't have
that just google the name of this of
this extension office editing for Docs
sheets and slides and it should come up
as an extension you can install note
that you must be using Google Chrome in
order to have this extension in order to
edit Microsoft Word documents if you're
using Firefox or Internet Explorer or
Safari you will not have the ability to
edit Microsoft Word documents within
Google Docs only Chrome can do it and
only Chrome can do it if this particular
extension is installed so let's say that
you do have it installed and then you're
scrolling through your Google Docs
Google Docs menu so this is Google Docs
you can see that I have some files which
are the native Google Docs format which
of course can be edited in any browser
but then I have a couple of Microsoft
Word documents which are you can see the
little W icon which indicates it's a
Word document
normally if you're using Firefox or
Internet Explorer or Chrome without the
extension what you can do is you can
open a Microsoft Word document and then
convert it to Google Docs in order to
edit it but that's not quite the same as
being able to edit the document itself
if you do open the document the
Microsoft Word document with chrome that
has the extension I mentioned earlier it
will look something
like this so here's a karate newsletter
and you can see the toolbar up here
shows that some editing is allowed for
February doc and first of all it says
it's an office compatibility mode it
lets you save it as Google Docs if you
want or just print it but then you can
see that there are some very simple
commands now this is not nearly as
extensive as a real Google Docs file
where you have all kinds of formatting
abilities basically for a Microsoft Word
document using office compatibility mode
you can do things like change the text
color so I'm gonna change that to purple
some very basic changes are allowed with
Microsoft dot docx documents and if you
have a dot docx document it will be
changed to dot docx you can also do
things like changing the positioning of
text adding bullet points but a lot of
the other sophisticated things that are
possible within Google Docs formatting
options are just not possible with this
very simplified version of being able to
edit a Microsoft Word document so
anyways this is how you can edit a
Microsoft Word document within Google
Docs without having to actually use
Microsoft Word which is expensive for
some people for more information on how
to use Google Drive and Google Docs you
can check out my book Google Drive and
Doc's in 30 minutes available from in 30
minutes com thanks for watching
