Box integrates with Office 365 thanks to new beta tool

Office 365 users are encouraged into storing their files in one of two locations -- locally or on OneDrive. Microsoft's own cloud storage service is neatly integrated into its office suite, just as it is into Windows 8.1. There are ways to integrate other services such as Google Drive, but today Box launched a beta version of Box for Office 365 in a bid to bring the cloud service to Office. The new beta was announced at Box's BoxWorks event. There are also plans to add Box integration to Office for iPad, although no timescale has been suggested for this.

The idea behind integrating Box into Office 365 is simple, but the beta page explains: "With our new Box for Office desktop app integrations, you can easily open, edit, share and save any file from Box seamlessly within Word, PowerPoint and Excel".

If you want to try out the beta, you can download it free of charge and you will then be able to access your Box account from within Office 365 apps. As you would expect, you can open and save files just as you can with OneDrive, but the beta tool also allows for files to be shared. With a file open, hit the File menu, select Share and then use the Share from Box option.

It's not clear how far off a final version of Box for Office 365 is, but this beta tool is something that will be welcomed by fans of the cloud storage service.