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0 pointsdragonwriter12y ago0 comments

> Imagine explaining this to your insert-technologically-inept-relative-of-choice.

"If you need to edit things in Drive, use the Drive app."

There are some use cases where the QO app makes sense, but its solving a fairly narrow problem that doesn't apply to most users.

> Well, does the icon look like--no, never mind, the icon is the same for both, four white lines in a blue square

What are you talking about? The icon for Word files in both the QO UI and the Drive app UI is a big blue W on a white square, and is nothing like the 3-long-1-short white lines on a blue square icon for Google Documents.

> Umm, well, open it in one of them, and if you can't edit it, open it in the other one.

The Drive edits Doc/Docx files; if for some reason you don't like using the Drive App to do that, you can switch to QO from the document opened in Drive by using the "Open in..." menu from Drive to open a document in QO.

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SEMW12y ago

> The Drive edits Doc/Docx files

I've just tried it, and no, it can't. On the webapp, editing is done by converting to google docs format; that option doesn't seem to be available on mobile. It can't even view them natively, if QO isn't installed it appears to show them in a web viewer. Only quickoffice can edit .doc/.docx's. But you're right you can open a .doc in QO from drive (assuming it's installed, it'll register an intent), which does alleviate the problem.

But it's still silly, and confusing for non-technical users, to have two similarly-designed office apps, published by the same company, which can each edit a mutually-exclusive set of document formats. And that using intents to edit works one way but not the other. I'll be surprised if they're not merged at some point.

On the other hand you're right about the icon. My mistake, I'll correct my post.

dragonwriterOP12y ago

> I'll be surprised if they're not merged at some point.

I would be too; it worth noting that doing separate things in overlapping-but-not-identical domains and then merging them over time (especially when one is an acquisition, like QO) isn't really unusual for Google (and increasing the overlap on the way to merger isn't unusual, either.)

QO's been around for quite a long time, and is a fairly recent acquisition. Its not a new offering, the news here is that its just been made free.

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