Microsoft adds real time co-editing in Box and DropBox with MS Office

Microsoft has announced a new set of integrations with Dropbox primarily aimed at offering more productivity and features while on the move. Starting Wednesday, Office subscribers will be able to work on documents, spreadsheets and presentations in real-time shared within Box and Dropbox.

With these new set of integrations, Dropbox users will able to edit documents at the same time when using Office Online, allowing co-workers or users to be more productive while working on a project. To do so, just open a compatible file with Office Online via Dropbox.com. Once the file users wish to work on is open, they can start working on that a particular file simultaneously and see what changes are being made in real-time. Users can also make comments for chatting among themselves and any changes made are automatically saved in Dropbox.

In addition, Office for iOS now also offers the same functionality with support for real-time co-editing directly from Box. Microsoft adds that the feature will also be rolled out to other cloud providers in the near future which include Edmodo, Egnyte and ShareFile.

Besides the co-editing feature, Microsoft has also announced that Box and DropBox will soon be integrated with Outlook.com. This would essentially allow Outlook users to send attachments and saved files straight to Dropbox, Box and OneDrive. However, the company hasn't specified an exact date as to when it'll be available for users.

"In the coming weeks, users of the new Outlook.com can attach files from Dropbox, Box and OneDrive right from their inboxes and they have the option to send these files either as traditional attachments or as cloud-based links," Microsoft's corporate vice president for the Office team Kirk Koenigsbauer, wrote in a blog post.