Week 5: Office Tools

Step 1

I had already created a Google Docs account before the start of the class, so I used my existing account (attached to Katherine.ruth.fischer@gmail.com) for the assignment.

Step 2

I have 10 documents saved in my Google Docs account, which I’ve started either for school, work, or personal use. It was easy enough to start a new document. I saved my new document as the first line I typed into it: ‘Test Google Docs Document for MLA 2.0 101 Class’.

Step 3

I uploaded a spreadsheet I keep of the student workers I manage for my job. The spreadsheet contains names and contact information in case I ever need to get a hold of any of them while I’m not at work.

Step 4

A while back, I planned an informal instructional session for the student chapter I run on Google Documents. For this session, I created a brief presentation on Google Docs, more to show how it works than anything. Instead of sharing this presentation, I shared a document containing meeting notes from the last officers’ meeting for my student group. I shared the notes with all of the attendees so that they could make any changes they saw fit.

Step 5

I like the Zoho application a lot, I think it’s a better example of a complete online office tool than Google Docs is, just because its applications are a little more segmented, making it a little less confusing to navigate straight off the bat.

Microsoft Office live is useful just because it was created by Microsoft, and so probably has the best compatibility with documents created in offline Microsoft applications. However, at least in Google Docs, I haven’t had too many problems uploading existing Microsoft documents.

Step 6

While I think eventually this may be the future of office products, I don’t think it will happen anytime soon. It may be because the examples we explored were all free, but they did not have the versatility and capabilities of offline products such as Microsoft Office. Features in Microsoft Office such as outlining, creating macros, mail merging, creating templates, and hyperlinked tables of content, are not available. I personally use these features often, and would be frustrated by the limitations of the online office tools if they were the only options available to me.

In the immediate future, I definitely see an online component being added to traditional office tools. It is too useful a feature for collaboration and creativity to leave out.