Dropbox and Microsoft are partnering to integrate Microsoft Office with the cloud-storage platform more closely than any other save Microsoft’s own OneDrive service.
The integration will launch with new versions of Office for iOS and Android in the next few weeks, and let users of both services save into Dropbox directly from Office, and edit Office documents directly from Dropbox.
Dropbox spelled out the terms of the collaboration Tuesday on the company’s blog, noting that “Dropbox is home to over 35 billion Office documents, spreadsheets and presentations.”
The new capabilities will roll out to all Dropbox users on iOS and Android “in the next few weeks,” according to the blog post. Microsoft’s own blog post says this will happen in conjunction with “the next updates to Office for iOS and Android.
In early 2015, the integration will also extend to the two services’ web apps, and to the newly-announced Dropbox for Windows Phone app.
“Today, Dropbox has 300 million users, of whom 70% are international, and a ton of them use Dropbox to get work done,” said Dropbox’s Ilya Fushman.
In September, Dropbox announced the partnership, this time with Google itself, aiming to make security tech easier to use. The two firms created Simply Secure, which has the mandate to improve adoption rates of security tools such as two-factor authentication in the wake of the Snowden revelations.
