Google Docs for Android adds Microsoft Office editing, improves line spacing

Abner Li | Sep 8 2020 - 2:27 pm PT

As announced last month, Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides for Android now support Microsoft Office editing. A related change sees Docs adjust line spacing based on the current font.

To boost mobile productivity, Google is bringing more and more web features to the mobile editing clients. At a high-level, this makes possible three big improvements:

Allows you to edit, comment, and collaborate on Microsoft Office files using Google Docs’, Sheets’, and Slides’ powerful real-time collaboration tools.
Improves sharing options, improves sharing controls, and reduces the need to download and email file attachments.
Streamlines workflows by reducing the need to convert file types.

Office editing support in Docs, Sheets, and Slides is meant to replace the legacy QuickOffice (Office Compatibility Mode) offering, which has “more limited functionality and collaboration capabilities.”

This capability is rolling out starting today and will be fully available over the next two weeks. It’s supported on all G Suite and personal accounts.

Meanwhile, Docs will now adjust line spacing based on the font you’re using. Google previously only factored font size and the manually set line spacing:

This will increase consistency in document length between Google Docs and other word processing programs, and help make sure converted Microsoft Word documents retain a similar length. It will be particularly useful for education and enterprise users, who may have documents with specific length requirements based on specific formatting combinations.