Dropbox Teams with Microsoft to Help You Be More Productive

Credit: Dropbox

If you use Dropbox to store and share Microsoft Office documents, your life is about to get easier.

The cloud storage and file-sharing company announced today its partnership with Microsoft, a move that will soon let mobile users integrate the service with Microsoft Office. This new feature will make it possible to edit Office files directly from the Dropbox mobile app, as well as access Dropbox straight from Office apps.

With this partnership, Dropbox and Microsoft aim to make working between Dropbox and Office a "seamless experience" across different platforms. Dropbox claims that it stores more than 35 billion Office documents, spreadsheets and presentations, so it only makes sense to integrate the cloud storage service with Office to make it easier to use the two services together.

Here are the three new features the Dropbox/Office integration has to offer business users:

Edit. Save time and skip a few steps by working on Office files within the Dropbox app. No need to download the file and open it in the Office app. Edit documents, spreadsheets and presentations on the go, and your work is automatically saved into Dropbox.

Sync. Whether you're working on Office files on the Dropbox app or Dropbox files on the Office app, all your documents are automatically synced in real time. This way, you're always up to date with the latest version of your files, regardless of which app you choose to work with.

Share. Dropbox is a file-storage and -sharing service after all, and the Office integration lets you take full advantage of cloud capabilities. Just like you would using the Dropbox app, you can share files using Dropbox links straight from the Office app — no need to go through the extra steps of saving the file on Office, uploading it into Dropbox, then opening the Dropbox app to generate and send the link.

Dropbox will be rolling out its Office integration over the next few weeks to iOS and Android devices. A Dropbox app for Windows Phone and Windows tablet will be available in the next few months.

The company also announced its plans to integrate Dropbox with Office Online within the first half of 2015.