Cloud computing is becoming norm very fast. You do not really need any office software like Open Office, Libre Office or Microsoft Office installed on your PC. Instead you can use free Google Docs to create, edit, save and print all kinds of documents. All your documents on Google Docs are saved on the Google servers and you can edit them in your web browser window. But sometimes you need to work on a document using an offline computer using the traditional office software like MS Office. For situations like this, you can download your documents from Google Docs and save them to your hard disk. Here is how :
- First of all, log on to your Google Docs account by visiting https://docs.google.com/ and entering your Google account credentials.
- Then click on the All items link on the left side menu as shown. Also click on the checkbox next to Actions to select all the listed documents.
- On the right-side of the list click on the Download buttont to start downloading process as shown,
- You will be shown a format conversion and download window. Select the All items tab. Then choose which format you want to convert the document to before downloading them. It is advised to leave the formats as pre-selected by Google Docs. Finally click on the Download button to start downloading.
Google Docs allows you to download 2 GB of data at one single time. Your selected documents shall be compressed (zipped) and then the download of the compressed ZIP archive will begin automatically. The ZIP file name would have a format like documents-export-2011-07-31 (of course with the date in filename when you downloaded the documents). You can extract the documents from this ZIP archive using a free tool like 7-Zip and then open them in an office software like Microsoft Office for offline editing.