I assume you’re not using the online version of Office 365. It’s collaboration capabilities are better than most people give it credit for.
Ask HN: “Git” for Microsoft Office?
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Re: Ask HN: “Git” for Microsoft Office?
#12First point. MS office documents have a vaguely capable version control system built in. It's not Git, but it may be enough.
Second point, I haven't tested this, but docx, xlsx etc are XML based and may be happily Git compatible.
Third point, if the above doesn't work, look into automatically saving / converting documents into and out of a Git compatible format with minimal loss of formatting etc. You may be able to convince your team that this is an acceptable compromise between the tools they are used to, and the power of DVCS.
Re: Ask HN: “Git” for Microsoft Office?
#13This might not be exactly what you're asking for but I'll just leave it here in case someone finds it useful:
A couple years back I built this: https://github.com/tomashubelbauer/modern-office-git-diff
It is a pre-commit script which unpacks Office XML into text contents and tracks that alongside the source file. This way you can consider the binary to be a source of truth, but with each commit you also get a textual diff showing what changed content-wise. More or less.
Some person built the same thing for OpenOffice and I link their project in my readme, too.
Re: Ask HN: “Git” for Microsoft Office?
#14O365 has had live editing for a while now[1], it's not even that hard to use. You can have that Golden Version and everyone can suggest changes and edits, then the document owner can accept or decline the edits. [1]: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Collaborate-on-Word...
This.
Re: Ask HN: “Git” for Microsoft Office?
#15I assume you’re not using the online version of Office 365. It’s collaboration capabilities are better than most people give it credit for.
Collaborative editing is supported by the desktop apps as well - I use it in Word a lot and it works pretty well. Your document has to hosted in SP online though.
Re: Ask HN: “Git” for Microsoft Office?
#16.docx is plain text xml though (You can even save explicitly as .xml which has all the images in base64). Is track changes not good enough?
(1) Now you get to train your office mates who have been emailing .docx files to each other for twenty years in git, specifically to merge XML files.
(2) What happens when someone checks in a hand-reconciled merge that is not a valid XML file, because whoops?
Re: Ask HN: “Git” for Microsoft Office?
#17> I can’t believe non-geeks have lived like this for 30 years.
Given how shitty MS software has always been, I can't believe people not only pay money for it but also accept it as the norm.
As for your question, non-geeks have been coping with this by saving a copy of a document before each edit so that when the inevitable catastrophe occurs, they can roll back. As a geek, you can use git manually. Adding that as a feature to Office would make it even more incompatible with itself than it already is.
Re: Ask HN: “Git” for Microsoft Office?
#18[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: “Git” for Microsoft Office?
#19Technically, tracked changes and SharePoint. But in practice, you’d rather send the changes to the project owner via carrier pigeon. I’ve looked into what it would take to make a git style system for docx (since it’s just zipped XML, right :D), and the file format was a nightmare whenever an edit was made. Someone smart should take a look at it, as there would be a massive market for a DVCS for Office files. Imagine…
My wife is a laywer and she and her colleagues (and the other lawyers they are working with) pretty much base their workflow for revising documents on track changes. I've never heard her complain about it.
Re: Ask HN: “Git” for Microsoft Office?
#20First point. MS office documents have a vaguely capable version control system built in. It's not Git, but it may be enough. Second point, I haven't tested this, but docx, xlsx etc are XML based and may be happily Git compatible. Third point, if the above doesn't work, look into automatically saving / converting documents into and out of a Git compatible format with minimal loss of formatting etc. You may be able to…
Docx & co are XML based, but they are _zipped_, therefore binary.
Which make a version control pretty much impossible.