I have tried tons of online storage applications, ‘webtops’, and other means of editing documents on the go from any computer.

Google Docs is one of the best out there, it even out performs the latest incarnation of Microsoft’s Skydrive (and I’m a BIG Windows user).  But my latest discovery with Box.com takes the cake when it comes to my particular situation.

Box.com has come up with a very handy plugin for Microsoft Word that allows you to open, access, edit, and save back to your Box.com account.  You might only get 5GB for free, but that’s plenty of space for relatively small Word documents.

This is what the plugin looks like on my 2007 MS Word application.

Cute, huh?

Now that I have this cute little plugin installed on my computer, I can edit any document I have on Box.com with MS Word as my editor.  Should I download this plugin onto my work computer, I can edit the same document and save it back to my ‘Box’.  The process is simple and efficient.  In this situation, I do not need to use any other third party editor, BUT I could.

Box.com also offers a way for you to edit the same document on their website using a version of Google Docs editor, which thankfully has been great at keeping the same formatting when it comes to MS Word Docs.

What I love the most is the seamlessness of the plugin.  I have yet to see it work improperly or act broken.  You log-in to your Box.com account and you can see all other Word documents present.  If you have MS Excel files there as well, you will not see those.

One hiccup I did notice was that if you already have a Google Docs account and you’re signed in to Google at the moment, the online Google Docs editor employed by Box.com will start to have issues.  You need to make sure you are logged out of Google first before using that tool.

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