Google LLC said today it’s adding more Microsoft Office integrations to its Workspace suite in an effort to make people more productive.

Google Workspace is a rebranded version of the product that was formerly known as G Suite and includes productivity tools such as Docs, Sheets, Slides and Gmail. In recent months, Google has stepped up its efforts to make Workspace more appealing to remote workers, frontline workers and others who need to collaborate with their colleagues and outside partners. Microsoft Corp. positions its Office 365 product in much the same way.

One of the most important new capabilities added today makes it possible for Workspace users to open and edit Office files directly from a Gmail attachment, Google Workspace Group Product Manager Erika Trautman said in a blog post announcing the updates.

“When you receive a Word document as an email attachment, you can open it and start editing in Docs with a single click while still preserving the Word file format,” Trautman said. “Then you can respond to the original email thread and include the updated file, right from Docs — saving you time by eliminating steps like downloading the file to edit, or searching for the relevant email to reattach it to.”

In addition, there’s a new Macro Conversion add-on that will help users migrate macros, which are rules or patterns that specify how a certain input should be mapped to a replacement output, from Excel to Sheets.

Other updates announced today include mixed page orientation support in Docs and Microsoft Word files. Docs will also gain support for inserting images behind text and watermarks sometime next year, Trautman said.

Google previously added native support for Office documents to the Web versions of Docs, Sheets and Slides in 2019, and then did the same for the mobile versions of those apps in September.

Earlier this month Google announced a new version of Workspace that’s customized for government agencies and provides more flexible pricing options and better security and compliance.

Google’s efforts appear to be paying off to a degree at least. In October it claimed it supports more than 2.6 billion customers, enterprise and education users that have chosen its productivity and collaboration apps.

Images: Google