Ask HN: “Git” for Microsoft Office? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: “Git” for Microsoft Office?

#111

Post by wenc » Wed, May 20, 2020, 10:25 PM UTC

bane wrote: post #96

Use sharepoint, office365, and Teams. It versions, it supports collaborative editing, no more mailing things around, and so on.

Sounds like many commenters here haven't used Office 365 and may have outdated ideas of what Office is capable of these days (it ain't Office 2010).

Of course one can't do a pull request with Office (non-geeks would struggle with the idea anyway) but live-editing of shared documents and version history is now built-in.

If two or more people open the same .docx/.pptx/.xlsx from a shared environment (Sharepoint/Teams/OneDrive), and then proceed click on Open in Desktop App (the browser-based apps are unpolished IMO), AutoSave is automatically turned on, and they're automatically thrown into live collaboration mode. This is the new norm in most enterprises that have Office365.

Most office folks require version history rather than version control -- not many are likely to need to branch, merge, pull, push -- and Office365 definitely supports the former. You can even have a threaded conversation about the changes in the document itself. -- when you add a comment, the chat sidebar opens. The back-and-forth comments are stored in the document.

Note: this is different from "Track Changes" in older version of office -- which still exists but is more for visual diffing. Version history only stores snapshots.

Re: Ask HN: “Git” for Microsoft Office?

#112

Post by microcolonel » Wed, May 20, 2020, 10:28 PM UTC

We're working with LibreOffice, but MS also supports OpenDocument. The quality of the XML produced by these programs is extremely poor. LibreOffice, for example, changes the name of every (or nearly every) automatic style every time you save, which makes it very hard to use the diffs. Also ODS doesn't stride formula references when you repeat rows, which baffles me.

Nonetheless, by simplifying the FODS files to use a subset of the format, the diffs are looking okay now. I created a wee little canonical string representation of the style parameters I want to use, and putting that string in the style:name attribute when I clean up the document.

Re: Ask HN: “Git” for Microsoft Office?

#113

Post by phonon » Wed, May 20, 2020, 10:34 PM UTC

wombatpm wrote: post #90

Track changes works for Word. Still no solution for Excel. One thing that can make things better is to teach people to use Styles correctly.

https://www.xltrail.com/

Re: Ask HN: “Git” for Microsoft Office?

#114

Post by wayoutthere » Wed, May 20, 2020, 10:34 PM UTC

bane wrote: post #96

Use sharepoint, office365, and Teams. It versions, it supports collaborative editing, no more mailing things around, and so on.

Office365 can be a tad frustrating since the web version and desktop version support different feature sets. It's not that one is better than the other, it's that some features exist in one version that don't exist in the other (mostly collaboration features). Throw in the Mac version of Office and you have yet another subset of features that isn't supported.

I get that they're headed towards WebKit for all their apps, but it's kind of frustrating to have to head to outlook.com for some things and have to use the desktop version for others (though the search via outlook.com is vastly improved over the desktop versions of Outlook).

Re: Ask HN: “Git” for Microsoft Office?

#115

Post by yesbabyyes » Wed, May 20, 2020, 10:36 PM UTC

eggsnbacon1 wrote: post #93

We fixed this at my company by converting our documents to markdown and using git. Can can also use LaTeX. They're honestly better formats for things like user manuals anyways because its trivial to display them on web and devices. We have our non-technical editors using Markdown and git just fine, but you may have a lot of initial resistance. We were able to force them to switch because we're mostly a tech company.…

> Never found a good solution to powerpoint

There are lots of markdown presentation tools, I've enjoyed using https://remarkjs.com/ which sounds like it could fit your workflow.

Re: Ask HN: “Git” for Microsoft Office?

#116

Post by wayoutthere » Wed, May 20, 2020, 10:38 PM UTC

toohotatopic wrote: post #109

basch wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this somehow prevent you from using Groups/Teams? >if the same slide is present in 15 Powerpoint decks any edit will require tons of mindless and error-prone copypasting This is exactly what you want SharePoint for. Have 15 people open the same PowerPoint deck, in desktop PowerPoint, editing the file simultaneously. It's fully versioned and you have no merging of files back together.

15 people opening the same deck is not the same as 15 people opening 15 different decks that have just one slide in common.

Google has this feature and it's a damn nightmare. If someone edits a deck but doesn't have permissions to the deck a linked slide is from, the link breaks. Also, changes made only flow one direction (master -> copies). There's basically no repeatable way to use it across multiple contexts. Slideware is not the same as modular code.

Re: Ask HN: “Git” for Microsoft Office?

#117

Post by extesy » Wed, May 20, 2020, 10:45 PM UTC

wenc wrote: post #111

bane wrote: post #96

Use sharepoint, office365, and Teams. It versions, it supports collaborative editing, no more mailing things around, and so on.

Sounds like many commenters here haven't used Office 365 and may have outdated ideas of what Office is capable of these days (it ain't Office 2010). Of course one can't do a pull request with Office (non-geeks would struggle with the idea anyway) but live-editing of shared documents and version history is now built-in. If two or more people open the same .docx/.pptx/.xlsx from a shared environment (Sharepoint/Teams/O…

You can actually do a sort-of pull request: suggested changes. When editing mode of the document is set to "reviewing" then your changes would appear as sidebar suggestions which the owner can accept or reject.

Re: Ask HN: “Git” for Microsoft Office?

#118

Post by Moto7451 » Wed, May 20, 2020, 10:49 PM UTC

extesy wrote: post #117

wenc wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like many commenters here haven't used Office 365 and may have outdated ideas of what Office is capable of these days (it ain't Office 2010). Of course one can't do a pull request with Office (non-geeks would struggle with the idea anyway) but live-editing of shared documents and version history is now built-in. If two or more people open the same .docx/.pptx/.xlsx from a shared environment (Sharepoint/Teams/O…

You can actually do a sort-of pull request: suggested changes. When editing mode of the document is set to "reviewing" then your changes would appear as sidebar suggestions which the owner can accept or reject.

Yup. This is how I (a developer) often interact with lawyers at work.

Re: Ask HN: “Git” for Microsoft Office?

#119

Post by TheCloudlessSky » Wed, May 20, 2020, 10:57 PM UTC

robenkleene wrote: post #82

prepend wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find if I enable edit permissions, people can do more than suggest changes, they can make them. An editor can turn off tracking, that has to be done frequently to fix formatting and layout issues, and changes aren’t visibly tracked. I wish there was a “pull request” for office with a permission that allowed suggestions but not edits.

This sounds great... in theory. But has a pull request feature ever been created for a non-plain text format? Intuitively, this doesn't really seem possible to me for a sophisticated document format. E.g., how would you represent a change to an embedded graph in a pull request? (And would that same approach scale to any form of embedded media?)

It's not an easy task, but it's doable! I co-founded a company called ProcedureFlow[0], that allows change requests but for hyperlinked flowcharts. My inspiration was 100% GitHub/pull requests.

A procedure is made up of many flows that are linked together. Everyone that uses the procedure views the "live" flows (like a master branch). Each user gets their own branch which we call a "draft". In a draft, a user is free to make any changes they want (add/delete/modify flows) and then submit all the changes for approval. Approving the change request then merges the changes into the "live" for everyone else to see/use. I even went so far as to build side-by-side diff of the flowcharts, rebasing/merging with live, and conflict resolution.

It's simplified in the UI so the terminology isn't 100% like git. But, one of our biggest hurdles though is actually teaching users how this works why it's better than the current mode of document locks/real time editing. And when our customers "get it", they really fall in love with the concepts and why it's better!

[0]: https://procedureflow.com/

Re: Ask HN: “Git” for Microsoft Office?

#120

Post by wnissen » Wed, May 20, 2020, 11:03 PM UTC

wenc wrote: post #111

bane wrote: post #96

Use sharepoint, office365, and Teams. It versions, it supports collaborative editing, no more mailing things around, and so on.

Sounds like many commenters here haven't used Office 365 and may have outdated ideas of what Office is capable of these days (it ain't Office 2010). Of course one can't do a pull request with Office (non-geeks would struggle with the idea anyway) but live-editing of shared documents and version history is now built-in. If two or more people open the same .docx/.pptx/.xlsx from a shared environment (Sharepoint/Teams/O…

Yep! I think Microsoft lulled people into a false sense that they weren't doing anything with Office, while the Google suite gradually gained features (and to be fair, does 90% of what a normal person would ever do with documents). But it turned out they were busy making every feature in Office work in the collaborative environment, with versioning. It's incredibly impressive, and I am not a natural fan of Microsoft. It doesn't work as well as Google with a crappy or nonexistent Internet connection, but in your typical office environment it's great. I think people will be really surprised at how easily you can do things like assemble slides for a collaborative presentation. Sharing with people outside the organization requires a Microsoft account of some kind (either institutional or your old Xbox Live or Minecraft account) but that's about it. A high fraction of everything can be done in the browser, so it's easier than ever to have a Linux desktop. Plus have you see they have LateX equations now?