Offline access comes to Google Docs

Google has done it, more or less. The company has enhanced its Google Drive (nee Google Docs) product to include offline editing, at least for Word documents.

The announcement came at Day Two of the 2012 Google I/O conference. Google Drive users can now access both documents and spreadsheets offline. To be clear though, only documents can be edited offline. For now, spreadsheets are read-only, but offline editing will be coming soon.

Presentations, drawings and other items from your Documents List are not available offline - yet. You also need to use the Chrome browser or Chrome OS to get this functionality.

Modifications made to documents while in offline mode will be synced to the cloud as soon as the user reconnects to the Internet.  Modifications made to documents while in offline mode will be synced to the cloud as soon as the user reconnects to the Internet. Once again, spreadsheets are read-only.   No other types of files are yet accessible offline.

To enable offline document access, a user pulls down the gears settings icon on his Google Drive home page, as shown above, then taps "Set up Docs offline." will need to enable offline access separately on each computer where they want to view their Google Docs offline. Note: once you have enabled offline access on a computer, anyone who can access that computer will be able to view all of your synced spreadsheets and documents. you should not allow offline access on public or shared computers.

It sounds like common sense, but then so does not using "password" as a password.