Sharing documents for collaborative editing

Filed in archive Open Formats on June 29, 2007

Often when sharing documents I have simply traded Word for Windows documents (you know, all those documents that end with ".doc"). This however has been most unsatisfactory in recent days since I have been working with a range of small businesses who do not have Word for Windows.

So I started using Google Docs & Spreadsheets as most any business will have a broadband connection to the Internet and a browser, the only two requirements for writing and sharing documents in Google Docs.

Google Docs is even more versatile than Word for Windows. From Google Docs I can share a document for collaborative writing and it will save the results in "versioned" files to show what changed have been made by my collaborators.

BUT when the document has been finished, Google Docs gives me even more options than Word. I can save the document in a Word format (.doc), an Open Document Format (.odt) particularly for all those Linux users of Open Office, a Rich Text Format (.rtf) and also can choose to publish the document via a Portable Document Format (.pdf) -- the latter of which microsoft word is not able to do.

With the collaborative capability and the ability to save the document into just about any format required, you cannot go wrong with using Google Docs as your sharing platform.