Google Drive test offline save PDF and Office files

A new beta version of Google’s G Suite allows users to store PDFs, Office documents and other files that are not from Google’s own services offline in Drive. Offline saving was already possible with Docs, Sheets and Slides.

You can save offline by enabling the option ‘Available offline’, which can be done by right-clicking on a file. However, the function is only available for Docs, Sheets and Slides. By enabling the function in Drive within Chrome on a desktop, the latest documents are automatically synchronized. It is also possible to edit the files offline.

With the new beta version, available to all G Suite users, ‘binary content’ can also be downloaded for offline access, reports 9to5Google. The option becomes available for images, Microsoft Office files, PDFs, and other files. This completes the offline experience of Google Drive. All important non-Google files can be accessed offline, for example when users are on the move or in an area with a poor internet connection.

Operation

The feature available for free consumer accounts uses a Google Docs Offline extension, which is pre-installed in Chrome. The new enterprise feature uses the Google Drive File Stream app for Mac and Windows, which is the business equivalent of Backup and Sync.

Administrators can sign up for the Binary Content Data to enable Google Drive’s extensive offline capabilities for their domains. For end users, the process is comparable to that of consumers. Users turn on offline in the Drive of Docs settings, log in to Chrome with the account associated with the whitelisted Google Group and go to Drive File Stream. To mark files as available offline, right-click on a file and then click on “Make available offline”.

The status bar contains a File Stream icon that shows the status of downloads.