Among the best laptops on sale right now, if you’re deeply rooted in the Microsoft ecosystem, you probably wouldn’t consider a Chromebook as your first choice. That’s fair. But it’s also popular in education and increasingly popular in businesses, so maybe you just received a Chromebook and need to use it.
Google’s Office suite is not as good as Microsoft’s and has almost no market share. Many individuals, educational institutions, and businesses still rely on Microsoft Office or Microsoft 365.
Microsoft 365 has web apps for all major products, but OneDrive has an even better way to integrate natively into the Chrome OS Files app. This is not yet a published stable feature, but anyone can try it out on the latest version of Chrome OS. Here’s what you need to do:
How to enable OneDrive in the Chrome OS Files app
The first thing you need to do is enable the flag in Chrome OS to turn on the magic. It’s not immediately clear what this does, but once enabled, you’ll be able to link your Microsoft account and access OneDrive from the Files app.
To enable the appropriate flags, follow these steps:
1. In Chrome, type: chrome:// flag Type in the address bar. If you are using the Lacros browser, i.e. Chrome separated from Chrome OS, you should type: os://flag Instead.
2. In the search box, type: #upload-office-to-cloud Find the flag.
3. Select valid from the dropdown box.
4. Restart your Chromebook to apply.
This is only the first part. There’s a little more you need to do now to trigger the OneDrive integration. When you open the file, you’ll see that nothing has changed. All you need for the next part is a Microsoft Office document (Word or Excel), the same one you would open in Microsoft Office.
Using this file on your Chromebook, you can: right click You will then see a new option below open with This selection will begin the process of installing and linking OneDrive for your Microsoft account and Files app.
This process is very easy, just follow the on-screen instructions. Each step is shown in the gallery below.
The setup seems a bit tedious at the moment, as it took me two attempts to link my Microsoft account. Once complete, you’ll be asked if you want to move your Office files to OneDrive. Microsoft 365 on Chrome OS uses OneDrive to handle files, which makes sense. For this guide, since you’re already a OneDrive user, we’ll assume you’re probably fine.
The Microsoft 365 web app is now installed and ready to use on your Chromebook, and you can access all your OneDrive files from within the Chrome OS Files app. Whenever you want to delete your OneDrive account, open your Chromebook’s Settings app and select[ăƒ•ă‚¡ă‚¤ăƒ«]You can remove it by selecting the option and clicking on your OneDrive account. Press the delete button to delete.
It’s great to see Microsoft and Google working together on small things like this that ultimately improve the end-user experience for everyone. Eventually it will be easier to set up than this, but for now this is what you need to work with.